- NIL Wire
- Posts
- AI, meet NIL
AI, meet NIL
A start-up is using artificial intelligence to help calculate athletes' NIL marketability. Plus Kirby Smart sounds off, Azzi Fudd has a fun new endorsement deal and more.
Kyle Rowland
November 18, 2025
Hey there,
In today’s newsletter, I have comments on an interesting list as well as my own thoughts about Kirby Smart’s NIL rant. Read up on the latest news from around the NIL world.
Do you follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook? You should! Click the link to stay updated on all your social channels. We’d also love to hear feedback on anything and everything about our newsletter. Hit reply or send us an email at [email protected].
— Kyle
FanSpark: Simple NIL That Works for Every Student Athlete
Most student athletes don’t have a business team to get them NIL revenue. But with FanSpark, they don’t need one.
FanSpark is a brand new, sports-only subscription content platform where every athlete in every sport can build a fan-powered NIL revenue stream in just a few minutes a day.
FanSpark is simple:
Athletes post short social content for sports fans around the world
Fans subscribe to their favorite athletes
Athletes keep 80% of the revenue, FanSpark gets 20%
Athletes keep full ownership of their content and total control over their brand and image
We’re big on athlete safety: NO DMs, NO pay-per-view content, NO betting and NO tips
Get in touch to learn how FanSpark can help every student athlete at your school, or go to www.FanSpark.pro for more information.
KICKOFF
Smart sends a shot toward Texas and NIL culture
Kirby Smart is a decidedly old-school football coach. Nothing wrong with that. Look at the guy’s record. He knows how to get positive results.
Not surprisingly, he’s had his share of complaints about NIL. He shared some more thoughts after Saturday’s 35-10 victory over Texas, in which Georgia outscored the Longhorns, 21-0, in the fourth quarter.
“Yeah, it’s the approach we take. We’re gonna validate in the fourth quarter, which is what we do in practice,” Smart said. “It’s what we do in the offseason. It’s what we build our core culture around is being a more physical team. You have to recruit physical players, and they have to buy into that process.
“I don’t know that a lot of these kids nowadays — they want the check. They don’t want physicality. When you have the check and no physicality, you end up with nothing. So you’re not just getting checks at our place. We’re hitting people.”
Yes, Smart wanted to get in a dig at NIL culture and the makeup of some of his own players. But make no mistake, this was a shot at Texas. The Longhorns probably have the most expensive roster in college football, and they have the most marketable player in the sport (at least before the season) in Arch Manning. There’s a perception that Texas is soft, and Smart took a grooved pitch and deposited it into the outfield seats.
But his remarks weren’t out of the ordinary. He loathes the direction college football is going regarding money. However, Smart continues to prove that he can win in this sport in multiple eras, adapting to the times and churning out Ws.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Snap, crackle, pop
Alabama kicker Conor Talty, who is only 11 of 17 on field goal attempts this season, had an audacious outburst at long snapper David Bird during Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma. It’s not known if Talty was mad about the high snap, the Oklahoma player jumping over the long snapper or both. Regardless, he gave us a wild visual. The missed field goal ended up being the difference in the game.
DOWN TO BUSINESS
Marketability, not stats, boosts NIL value
AI is the name of the technology game, much like NIL is the path forward in college sports.
So what if someone created a tool to combine the seemingly impenetrable forces? Actually, it’s already happened. Out2Win is a marketing platform that uses AI to help brands find NIL influencers to promote their product and elevate everyone involved.
In May, Out2Win raised more than $1 million in seed funding. But the company has been around since 2021, when Jack Adler, a Syracuse undergrad at the time, founded it as an agency to guide companies in the new world of NIL. Out2Win pivoted during the AI boom, as Adler saw an untapped opportunity in the college athletics space to combine AI and NIL.
Out2Win’s algorithms scrape social media accounts to learn about athletes and their followers, creating a database that gleans valuable information for brands. The end result is an Out2Win Score, a proprietary marketability algorithm that evaluates an athlete’s social influence, sponsorship performance and growth potential. Factors include paid post performance, engagement rate, content frequency and follower growth.
Out2Win’s list of the 50 most marketable athletes in winter sports is launching this week, and NIL Wire got a sneak peek. I had two immediate reactions to the top of the list: Women’s basketball’s growth remains strong, and it pays to be the son of a famous basketball father.
UConn’s Azzi Fudd, with a score of 99, is No. 1 on the list, followed by LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson. USC’s JuJu Watkins (No. 6), UConn’s KK Arnold (No. 9), South Carolina’s Chloe Kitts (No. 12) and LSU’s Milaysia Fulwiley (No. 17) are also in the top 20.
Bryce James, a freshman guard at Arizona and the son of LeBron James, is third despite the fact that he hasn’t appeared in a game this season. Shaquille O’Neal’s son, Shaqir, a senior at Sacramento State, is averaging four points so far but finds himself No. 11. The younger James and O’Neal have a combined seven million followers on Instagram and TikTok.
Jake West, Hansel Emmanuel and Brandon Dwyer provide another fascinating glimpse into an era where social media engagement is more important than 3s and dunks. All three play minimal minutes but rank in the top 20.
West, a freshman guard at Northwestern who averages 13 minutes per game, is seventh, one spot behind Watkins. The three-star recruit has 1.6 million TikTok followers. In 2021, he posted an unremarkable video of himself dancing that launched his viral fame.
Emmanuel, a senior at Austin Peay who plays 11 minutes per game, had his left arm amputated at the age of six. Dwyer, a senior at Florida Gulf Coast, is perhaps the most well-known walk-on in the country, thanks to his “Road to 1 Point” social media posts. All three players rank ahead of BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, who could be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.
The top 50 includes other men’s basketball players from Sacramento State, South Carolina, Grand Canyon, Tarleton State and Bethune-Cookman. Olympic gold medalist Jordan Chiles (UCLA), as well as lesser-known female gymnasts, are on list. Redshirt freshman Penn State gymnast Bobby Alessio of TikTok fame is No. 33.
The most significant outlier is Julianna Dada, who plays basketball at Texas JUCO Clarendon College. She’s a robust content creator who has more than 200,000 Instagram followers.
Rankings are never the definitive end-all, be-all. And no one can fully capture an athlete’s worth or appeal; it’s whatever a company decides. But these lists are a fun window into how brands operate in the social media age.
More news and links:
Similar to Wisconsin, Maryland is bringing back its football coach while the athletic director promised additional resources.
Logan Hittle has gone from janitor to walk-on to leading Ohio State’s NIL efforts.
Kenny Dillingham and Arizona State are going all-in on NIL to keep the Sun Devils nationally competitive.
Ohio principals voted on Monday to make high school NIL legal. Not all administrators are thrilled.
ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT
Who doesn’t love Christmas AND dogs?!
Azzi Fudd is off to a great start in her senior season, leading top-ranked UConn to a 4-0 record with 17.8 points, 2.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists. And she landed an NIL deal with Chewy and produced the cute ad below.
