New NIL Exchange helps Montana Griz Student-Athletes

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The University of Montana Athletics Department has adopted a new program designed to help student-athletes better and more efficiently utilize the ‘Name Image and Likeness’ program to connect with businesses to enhance their income while on campus.

KGVO News spoke to Eric Taber, Director of Communications with UM Football, as well as men’s and women’s tennis teams about the enhanced program.

UM Announces Enhancement of 'Name Image and Likeness' for Student Athletes

“It’s a new addition to what we've been offering our student-athletes, an expanded partnership with ‘Influencer’, who's a national leader in the name image and likeness space,” began Taber. “Really what is, it's just giving our student-athletes more opportunities to leverage their name image and likeness for sponsorship opportunities to put it simply.”

Taber referenced the original policy to help student-athletes take advantage of Name, Image, and Likeness.

“We launched or relaunched the ‘Good Old Grizzlies Collective’ earlier this year and this offers them more,” he said. “The collective offers more sort of ‘booster facing’ opportunities for the student-athletes. If a group of boosters wanted to pay a quarterback some money to do Twitter posts or whatever, then they can do that through that, but this is more business to business really.”

The New Policy will Extend Opportunities Far Beyond Montana

Taber said the new NIL policy will help student-athletes expand their opportunities far beyond Montana.

“Companies from not only Missoula and Montana, but nationwide, maybe worldwide; companies that have opportunities for student-athletes to take advantage of, and it's just a go-between,” he said. It's just a way to connect the student-athletes with those companies. “It could be things from a Twitter post or it could be hiring them to speak at an event. It could be all kinds of different opportunities, so really, it's just a safe and easy way to connect student-athletes with companies so they can get the opportunities now.”

Taber said there is a New 'Influencer' App for Student Athletes

Taber said the new ‘Influencer’ app will help student-athletes stay within compliance of the NCAA.

“All the reporting is seamless for our compliance departments, which then in turn gets reported to the NCAA,” he said. “So it keeps everything aboveboard and keeps everything front-facing and makes sure the student-athletes themselves don't get in trouble with something they didn't know they had to do. It's not very often that rules are broken intentionally. It's that ‘you don't know what you don't know’. And so this is an app basically, that makes it super easy for the kids to get opportunities and make sure it's done right.”

Businesses and other interested parties can immediately begin registering for the Griz NIL Exchange for free by clicking here.