Twins making big accomplishments in NIL

This story absolutely spoke to me. I have talked about a lot of areas of how college athletes maybe haven't been allowed to use the system in economic ways. For many, many years, college athletes certainly could have used their scholarship and used the sport that they play. To better themselves in terms of education, setting themselves up for financial future after playing. It doesn't all have to be about going pro in your sport. I don't think the NCAA does a lot of really good things, but that promo that they run during the NCAA tournament, most of our athletes go pro in something other than their sport. It's very true. But in terms of the major sports, most of the time it's the athletes that are getting used.

Not in the case of Haley and Hannah Cavender. They have used their sport and their notoriety to incredible lengths. Amanda Krstovich from Front Office Sports is joining us. Your story spoke to me today.

I thank you very much for coming on to talk about it. I was kind of surprised that they both retired because they had at least another year of eligibility. They came from Fresno State to Miami for last season. I think one sister was interested in playing, but didn't want to play without her sister. And the other sister was like, I'm done. And now they're just going to go make what, millions?

First of all, thank you for your kind words about the story. I think that the Twins went to Miami and they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish on the court. They said they wanted to make it to an NCAA tournament. Not only did they do that, but they went on a very unexpected run. And yeah, like you said, they could easily make millions. I mean, their value in college was, you know, estimates put them at upwards of 900,000 each while they were in college. So now the sky's the limit. So it makes perfect sense to me while, you know, at this exact moment when they're maybe at the height of their fave after their, you know, their NCAA tournament run that they would capitalize on that and use it to propel them forward in their, you know, post-playing and then post-college careers.

Amanda Kostovich from Front Office Sports is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. They also kind of cross both parts of the NIL space. There's the more traditional what we all thought NIL was going to be about, which was having your notoriety aid you in the marketplace with endorsements, representing companies, things like that. But also they kind of got Miami in a very, very small amount of trouble with their relationship with, I guess it was John Ruiz, the big booster at Miami and the school's involvement in that meeting.

Can you walk us through that? Yeah, that was a very interesting case. So basically the NCAA, you know, caught wind. They said in their report that, you know, folks had reached out to them to, you know, say that there might have been a recruiting violation regarding the Cavender Twins NIL deal with Miami booster John Ruiz. Now I will point out and point out that technically those deals are endorsement deals.

He has two companies that he, you know, uses as, you know, the sponsorship products, right? So essentially the only violation they could find was that the Twins met with Ruiz when they were on their recruiting trip and that meeting was sort of, but not really organized by Miami head coach Katie Meyer. Like she had involvement over text with connecting them and that apparently is not kosher. And then the other thing that they found was that Ruiz gave them a free dinner at his home. They couldn't even prove that they talked about NIL at the dinner. So, you know, the coach and the team got nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Ruiz didn't get in trouble at all and the Twins didn't get in trouble at all. I mean, it is really the NCAA going, well, we got to do something here. I don't know what we're going to do. It's really not that big a deal. And of all the things that we kind of know are going on about NIL and tampering and the transfer portal, even though that's always gone on. This is like the lowest level possible thing that has happened. But the NCAA was sort of, and Miami basically gave the, said, here, do what you want.

They knew they weren't going to get hit hard. Yeah, they did what I believe is called a negotiated resolution with some of my lawyer friends called a plea bargain, you know, but it was a plea bargain for for a very low level violation to begin with. Right. And then Miami came out with a statement or two basically saying that they thought it was kind of ridiculous. And then the Twins themselves were, you know, posting TikTok, making fun of it like they were joking about the NCAA and they were joking about, haha, you guys all thought we were suspended and we weren't in the NCAA tournament because of our violation, but we didn't actually get punished. One could argue they were actually making money off of the violation because they were creating content off of it.

No question. Creating content maybe for their own podcast. So they're going to get paid into a podcast now. And they're going to be professional wrestlers that I read that correctly in your piece on frontofficesports.com? Yeah, so one of their NIL deals was with WWE.

And WWE has a very interesting NIL program called Next in Line. Basically, they, you know, a lot of their a lot of the most, you know, of the wrestlers that they that end up being successful at WWE. This is what like they've told me is their former college athletes who may not be quite good enough to go pro in their sport, but they're athletic. You know, they are used to being in the spotlight.

Maybe they have a personality. So, you know, they're good for WWE. However, the NIL program gives WWE an opportunity to introduce the athletes to this post college opportunity earlier. So they have been part of that program since 2021. They're not the only athletes who have gone through this WWE pipeline. They're going to be going.

I read they're going to be going in the spring sometime in spring to like try out, you know, kind of do all the training. There's like this process that they have to go through. It's not necessarily like guaranteed. Right. But I mean, you know, hint, hint, wink, wink. Why wouldn't you want the cabinet between being on WWE?

I mean, come on. So, yeah, that's that's one of their next ventures, apparently. And it all started with an NIL program in 2021. I just can't figure out, will it be a tag team, which will be a heel? Will they have to wrestle each other?

There are so many possibilities here. Look, they have absolutely rocked the NIL space. So good for them. And again, at the very beginning, this is a great example of how athletes can use the colleges and and and athletics and all of that to their benefit. And man, they're they're absolute Hall of Famers in that regard. You know.