As college sports continue to evolve, the University of Virginia continues to produce some of the most competitive athletics teams in the nation. The school has captured 33 National Championships in multiple sports, including men's basketball, baseball, women's swimming and diving, men's lacrosse, and more. With Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) becoming a growing part of the conversation, fans have had a lot of questions about how UVA fits into that part of the landscape.
Recently, TheSabre.com hosted an exclusive Zoom session with Lo Davis, Executive Director at Cav Futures, to discuss NIL, how it works at Virginia, and more. Cav Futures is the official NIL Collective for the University of Virginia. Through the collective and an associated Cav Futures Foundation, Cav Futures works to educate student-athletes and interested partners about NIL as well as to guide student-athletes through deals.
Below are some excerpts from the call to provide clarity on NIL at UVA and the goals and operations of Cav Futures. Editor's Note: The interview below has been edited for clarity and conciseness. Questions came from varying participants on a Zoom call with Lo Davis, Executive Director at Cav Futures.
Cav Futures Q&A
Lo Davis: I just appreciate you having me on. Thank you.
Sabre Zoom: We've talked about how you and the University and the athletic program are doing NIL the right way, the way it's designed, the way it was approved, the way it's supposed to be done. So I try not to be a cynic. And first of all, I completely agree with that. But there are rumors that other schools don't do NIL the way it was designed and supposed to be and the way we're doing it.
... The numbers you hear, and I don't know how many are accurate, how do you feel, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot, it's kind of, it bothers me a little bit because it seems unfair. How can we at Virginia compete against those kinds of monies that are being tossed around and it's not quid pro quo, you're not performing a function or service or something anywhere close to that monetary amount?
Lo Davis: ... You know, when you hear the rich gets richer, there's really not a ton of difference in terms of, you know, how much money, what monies are being spent. I do think there's a ton of misinformation out there. ... I caution people to really take a lot of what they hear with a grain of salt.
I do believe here at Virginia, you're right, we are going to do it the right way, which makes it a challenge. I also firmly believe at Virginia, we were reactive instead of proactive. We're probably a year behind those schools that planned ahead of time. I think our collective Cav Futures, we started with 0 bucks where a lot of these other collectives started with donors who gave seed money. And so we're really hitting that point of fundraising and striding to get more money into our collective.
And then the other thing, as you said, that resonates with me is that true Name, Image, and Likeness, it's not being done the way that its original intent was. And that was to create sponsorship deals, utilize the value of that student-athlete, and create revenue-generating opportunities. Now it's about how much money can we get in the pot to acquire and retain student-athletes. Now, it's nothing wrong with that. I think the acquisition piece is careful. You have to be careful with that. You can't use an inducement right? But what we can do, and we're starting to do it in a really much better situation here at Virginia, specifically with men's basketball, is that if you can create a historical reference or record of working with student-athletes, it now leverages Tony Bennett to sit down with any of those recruits and any of those parents and say, hey, there is a collective Cav Futures that our student-athletes work with. And they, student-athletes, are making X to X [range].
And so those are just factual records that they can use. And Tony never says, if you come, we will pay you 'X' but he can certainly say the historical reference of working with Cav Futures, our student-athletes have done that. I know I've gone around about and answering your question, but I will say this, the schools that are using this in a way that is unsavory, in a way to lure student-athletes to their university, just wait, you'll see what happens. When these institutions and when these collectives can't cash the checks that they're writing, the student-athletes are gonna blow this thing up. And so that's why it's important for us to raise money, do the deal, and make sure that we can compensate and do all the things that we promised that we would do.
Sabre Zoom: I'm going to build from there just because this is something I don't think that I even fully understand. Recruiting, they're not allowed to say, we'll pay you X to come here. You said they can give kind of like guideposts is the way I would put it. Are they allowed to reference recruits to you or can recruits and their parents contact you directly at all?
Lo Davis: No, the only time that I can talk to a student-athlete is when they have been cleared and they are matriculating to the University. And so each summer, I will get a list of student-athletes who have been cleared for participation and fully enrolled in school. And then at that time, I can talk to the student-athlete.
Sabre Zoom: Perfect. Yeah, I wasn't sure if they emailed you, if you just have to go, like, sorry, I'm not allowed to speak to that sort of thing.
Lo Davis: Well, and I've had actually a couple of student-athletes, parents reach out to me prior to matriculating to the University and unfortunately, I referred them to the coach and let the coach speak with them. Tony Elliott says it best. Tony Elliott said, if you're not matriculating to the University, nobody can give you a number. There is not a number associated until you're an actual student-athlete here at the University.
Sabre Zoom: Football, men's basketball, women's basketball kind of are the front end drivers here, so maybe the engine of the train and then all the cars are going to hopefully flow behind that. Let's just start with football. You said Tony Elliott. What sort of things are possible you think, where can fans help? Either through Cav Futures or small donations or whatever.
Lo Davis: Yeah, so I can tell you right now over the last couple weeks, we've hit a lot of momentum going forward. We're now getting full-fledged support from the University, from our athletic director, from our rector, from our president. And that's a first and so we hosted an event a couple of weeks ago, and we had both of those individuals in attendance. Along with Tony Elliott and Carla Williams. And we educated that room on why it's important to have a strong NIL program specifically for football.
And there were some high capacity donors, some people who really didn't want to address NIL that ultimately showed up. And once they started to listen to how we do it at UVA and the need to do it, we've had a lot of really positive momentum in the fundraising area over the last couple of months or excuse me, a couple of weeks, and we expect that to continue because now we have frontline, really high qualified, high profile people that are doing peer-to-peer fundraising. The one thing that is legal, anyone within the University can ask to raise money for Cav Futures; the one thing that they cannot do is ask for a specific sport.
So, we are really working together where they are bringing specific donors to the table. And now I'm having conversations with those donors. And they're yielding some significant contributions for our NIL program for football. We've still got a long ways to go, but we're very excited about where this thing is going.
Sabre Zoom: And we think that's extremely important, even with the new operations building being built, correct?
Lo Davis: That is correct. I mean, it's, you know, when you start to talk to Carla Williams, and I think this question was asked of her, um, through the VAF, if someone gave you $5 million, how would you spend it? And her answer was two and a half million would go to enhancement, and coaches' operational funds. And then the other two and a half million would go to NIL. And so that's how important it is right now to this program. We certainly know that football is the driver.
Sabre Zoom: So you've said a couple of times about how UVA does it. So I guess, can you walk us in a short way through, how do you work with an athlete? So you get the list. These folks are coming to school here. Maybe what are two or three steps that happen to inform them so they can make a decision, I want to participate or I don't? And then just how do things move from there?
Lo Davis: Yeah, the one thing that's been pretty glaring to me is that NIL is not for everybody, including some of our major programs. And so identifying from a traditional marketing standpoint who is desirable for brands to work with is one thing. A lot of times that is self-identified through the brand partner reaching out to us. The second piece of it is that we've had student-athletes sign in through our student-athlete portal who have interest in NIL. We know that some are more marketable than others.
And so we have stayed true to, yes, we realize the top 1% will make money, meaningful income, but how can we help the other 99%? And we've done a really good job through the career development side and just making sure they get in the right room with the right people. So, yeah, I can get you 200 bucks for a social media post, but if I can get you in the room with Boston Scientific and you bring your resume, I could probably get you $100,000 job. Some of our student-athletes are falling into that, and they're saying, hey, I want to see what's available to me, but I don't have any expectations.
So, you know, from opportunity to execution, it varies from program to program, from student-athlete to student-athlete. We've had some donor-funded money that stepped up for men's basketball. It came to us, and it allows us to be very competitive now in this world keeping our players but also the transfer portal. And so it's our job now to create the work for those student-athletes in order to earn that money. And so we've had a lot of fun with doing some brand stuff, but also the community engagement piece is very, very important to us.
Sabre Zoom: And that part goes through Cav Futures itself. So you create content for your content arm, and then you pay the athlete to go do whatever the content is. Is that accurate?
Lo Davis: So, yeah, that's accurate. So, through Cav Futures, the actual NIL collective, there's multiple ways that we can utilize student-athletes. So, whether it's attending events, whether it's autograph signings, whether it's personalized Zoom calls, whether it's promoting Cav Futures in our Cav Club, there's multiple ways that we can compensate the student-athletes for doing that work. Through our foundation - we have our Cav Futures Foundation, we launched that back in January of this past year - and that piece was not formed just as a pass-through for tax-deductible funds, we started off and we leaned heavily in on education, the financial literacy piece. We've got a couple great programs going on right now with financial literacy. We've got a partnership with this organization called Game Plan, which allows online educational tools. The career development, we're a co-sponsor for the football career fair. So there's a lot of things going on through the foundation.
But there's also the community engagement side. Where we partner with the Ronald McDonald House and the Yellow Door Foundation, we just did a partnership with the City Of Promise where we can now tie in student-athletes and we can compensate them for highlighting that charity doing volunteer work, doing things like that. And it's legal to compensate them. So we sit down with them and we tell them, look, because we want to teach you philanthropy and what it's like to be in the community that's going to help them later on in life, we don't have to pay you for everything. And we have a lot of kids that show up and they do stuff with these organizations that Cav Futures never even knows about. And that tells us that it's an effective partnership when they start to do those types of things.
Sabre Zoom: I was going to ask you, do you know if prospective student-athletes talk to current student-athletes about the NIL experience. So if a recruit is on a visit, what are the actual players allowed to talk about?
Lo Davis: Yeah, so the players are actually allowed to talk about their experience with Cav Futures. And Cav Futures is not, you know, we're not the exclusive NIL representation. I mean, these student-athletes are their own entities. So there are many, many deals that happen outside of our purview. But to answer your question, yeah, absolutely, they can talk to them about their experience. They can talk about the activities.
If they're smart, They wouldn't talk dollars and cents. I think that should be left up to coaches and administrations to give that factual information. Even when I meet with student-athletes, I say, look, I don't tell people what I make. I certainly don't think it's something that you should discuss because not everyone has the same market value. Not everyone is making the same amount of money. And the one thing that I have communicated with coaches, and even though they can't tell us who to give money to and how much and all of those things, the one thing that resonates with all of our coaches is that, hey, we don't want to fracture the locker room.
And so if there are ways that we can get all of our student-athletes to participate at some level, that's the ideal scenario for these programs. Baseball looks at it a little bit differently. I think for Coach [Brian] O'Connor, he looks at NIL as a way of closing the gap. So when he's talking to student-athletes and he can reference NIL opportunities, those student-athletes that end up transferring to UVA, instead of paying 70% to come and play their final year in their grad season, with NIL as part of their package, now they can pay 10%. And their whole deal is, look, I don't need Porsche and Ferrari money. I want to develop. I want to win. I want to get drafted. And that's when the real NIL money comes in.
Sabre Zoom: The coaches, how often do they ping you?
Lo Davis: It's happening a lot. A lot right now. And I laugh because Andres Pedroso, and you would think NIL, tennis, does it matter? Andres and I have talked more in the last two months than I have, I think, in the time that I was at VAF. And my conversations with Andres is different. He's asking, he's inquiring, he's asking for information.
I think a lot of these coaches now, whether it's Andres, whether it's Brian O'Connor, whether it's Lars Tiffany, they're hearing it more out on the recruiting trail. And so they want to be informed, educated. The cool thing about all of these coaches, they want to be compliant as to what they say, and what they can and cannot say. And so that's been very interesting, but we're starting to hear more now where these coaches who used to have their own enhancement fund and friends of, and all of that, they're saying, well, gosh, we need to raise another separate bucket of money for NIL. And so, you know, a basketball pot is going to look certainly much different than a tennis pot, if you will. And so there's fundraising around that. But also, you know, the good thing about our student-athletes and our coaches, they know that it's legal by the NCAA. So they're saying what opportunities are my kids afforded?
Sabre Zoom: If a big donor says, we want to do the Utah thing, we want to give every player a truck, is that allowed?
Lo Davis: It is allowed. The crazy part about it is that you don't think about the taxes that are associated with it. You don't think about the insurance that's associated with it. Those deals are so far and few between they're the splash deals that everybody wants to hear about. I think again at Virginia, we just want to check that box. We want to be consistent. If there are student-athletes who have earning potential to make 6 figures and above. Hey, let's go ahead and maximize that. But to do something like that, is that going to make Virginia that much better or get more recruits? It's not.
Sare Zoom: I just wanted to ask directly if it was even allowed. If somebody wanted to do something crazy, could they? Wall Street Journal had a article out, I think it was, and it said something along the lines of major football powers, every starter's making a 100 grand. And I know we're supposed to take things with a grain of salt, but that's the Wall Street Journal. That's a reputable, you know, source. Is that even in the ballpark?
Lo Davis: I think that number is too high and I'll challenge you with this. They may be signed for 100 grand, or are they getting paid 100 grand? And I know there are some collectives out there that are folding the tent because they promised, hey, if you come, we got these checks waiting on you and they haven't been able to deliver. And so, yes, there are programs out there that have plenty of money. I actually watch the Country Roads Trust out of West Virginia. I really like watching them. That's the only collective I follow.
Oliver Luck was one of the original founders. We know he's got a great reputation. They've got about $8 million in their collective. And that's pretty significant. And I think they're running that through three sports. So they're doing some really good things. But there are a lot of collectives and institutions out there they're actually trying to raise the money after it's been promised. And if there's going to be anything that blows up NIL, it's going to be when kids are not getting their money. And it's happening out there big time.
And so for us, we can do it one or two ways. We can try to compete with some of that and find ourselves getting in trouble in more ways than one. Or we can continue to build on a program, which we're starting to get momentum, and wait everything else out, because I'm telling you, there are going to be teams and programs that they make the splash recruiting class or recruit. Just wait, you know, and that's where we are right now. So, again, we're in a situation, 6 months ago, I probably would have shied away from this call, because I think people could have used this against us, but you and I talked offline, I don't really think that the masses know how much work is being done to support Virginia and NIL. We've got a lot of work left to do, but, man, Cav Futures has been really, really working behind the scenes. And if you talk to our student-athletes, our football team, our men's basketball team, our women's program, we're starting to do more with them, baseball, I think the student-athletes will tell you that there's some things happening here that the general public, they just don't know.
Sabre Zoom: Just real quick, is the biggest challenge raising money? Is that the biggest challenge right now?
Yeah, the biggest challenge is really raising money. I think educating [too], there is a contingency of people who, and we all had a hard time kind of adjusting to this new landscape of of the acquisition and retention and paying student-athletes and all of that. And I try not to be defensive, but what I say is, hey, I have a four-year degree from UVA. I worked really, really hard to get that degree. But during the course of those four years, that degree didn't buy me, or working towards that degree didn't buy me a ham sandwich, right? So to be able to have money that goes into these student-athletes' pockets, and again, I keep referring to it's not Porsche and Ferrari money, we've been educating donors and people who are trying to understand NIL that it's here. We have to do it. And if we don't embrace it as a culture and as a University, the quality of the student-athletes and the performance on the field is gonna drop drastically.
I'll share a story with this group. I met with a young lady two weeks ago to talk about an opportunity. And this opportunity was gonna pay this young lady $13,000 over the course of six months, okay? So we can do the math. When I spoke with her and I gave her this opportunity, she cried. And she said, you changed my life today. Over $13,000. And so while I don't minimize the amount, that's the impact that we're having with student-athletes being able to create opportunities to make some money and put it in their pockets.
Sabre Zoom: So the process right now is you're reaching out and talking to people and encouraging people to make donations to the fund is that it?
Lo Davis: Yeah, it is. And you know I think the University understands, and our approach has always been, we've got to educate. We've got to educate. Once we get people educated, then let's direct and make the ask. So, there was an article that came out in UVA Today. It reached 300,000 inboxes. We've got an email that's going out from the university talking about it's going to go to all season ticket holders and donors, and we'll be able to repeat that on social media. So that's getting the word out.
And then I think we need to be more transparent in terms of the what could happen if we don't support this? And again, I think we're getting in that direction. We're starting to raise more money. The subscription services, one of the complaints that we had early on was that, hey, Cav Futures, you only care about big donors. Well, that's not the case. We wanted to be able to create something of multiple levels that gave people the opportunity to, whether it's $4.40 we we took it off the 4th Side or $444 is to be able to give you access to student-athletes to have more events.
So my goal is, can we grow that? Because we had our first event the night of the NC State game. We had a tailgate. We had our men's and women's basketball team there. We had Cav Club subscribers who gave 20 bucks or more. And quite honestly, it was a success. But I wish we would have had it during the JMU game when there was 50,000 people there as they're walking by and they see Reece Beekman and some of our other student-athletes, Kymora Johnson. Well, how do we get into that party? Well, join Cav Club. So we want to do more of those things so that people can have access to what they want most. It's not me. It's the student-athlete. So we hope to have more events and drive more opportunities through our Cav Club.
Sabre Zoom: That's great. I mean, let me just ask when you're telling this story that example you just gave about the young woman with $13,000 that's super powerful. Some people learn through generalizations. Others need concrete examples like me. So sprinkle some of those concrete examples there to the extent you can. That makes it very real and also helps with the scale of what you need, because I'll admit my view is you needed some big checks real fast to get off the ground and I'm sure you'd like to have those, but it sounds like there's room for a lot of others as well.
Lo Davis: It is and one thing that is really promising for us as well as, you know, we have a seat at the table with the VAF now, and I've been to two of their staff meetings. Kevin Miller, who is the new executive director is phenomenal. He is very proactive. And talking to his staff to say, listen, you know, we've got endowment, we've got facilities, we've got the annual fund, but guess what, NIL is necessary. So, he has given his staff members a directive to say, we've got to be supportive of NIL. We need to have those conversations. They're allowed to raise money for NIL. They can't do it for a specific sport. And so I think the collaboration amongst Cav Futures and VAF is going to be very, very important. And I think, hey, now we can accomplish some really, really good things together. Yes. We're not competing.
Sabre Zoom: I didn't think so, but just, it's always said, well, do I back off there and come over here or it's just again, great to address it up front.
Lo Davis: Well, and the good thing about it, and we've said this all along, whether when Dirk [Katstra] was in place, or now Kevin, we're an and organization, not an or. I'll give another quick example how that relationship is really working well. I had a gentleman that I spoke to out of New York who had interest in supporting men's lacrosse and never made a gift to the Virginia Athletics Foundation, had no contact there. We talked for about an hour, and yeah, I would have loved to have taken all of his money for NIL, but I told him other ways that he could support and so sure enough, I get a email on a Saturday morning, and he said, hey, listen, I'm gonna do $25,000 to Cav Futures, and I'm gonna do $25,000 to support the Operational Fund for Men's Lacrosse. ... So for me, instead of trying to get more money for NIL, I wanted him to make sure he had somebody that he contacted over at the VAF. To work together. So that's how it's going to have to happen.
The other thing that I think it's important for people to know, for NIL to be sustainable, the fundraising model is great. I don't know if that's going to be the lasting piece for this. I think being able to get and grow our brand partnerships, I think identifying alumni who are in decision-making positions, who have control of companies that want to assign student-athletes to marketing deals, that's traditional, true NIL, and that's how I think, at the end of the day, we're going to survive this thing for the long haul.
Sabre Zoom: The question I have is do student-athletes perceive their NIL deals as sort of performance-based deal, meaning on the field performance-based, or whatever they agree to do for the NIL?
Lo Davis: Yeah, so the one thing that is one of the rules is that it's illegal to be pay-for-play and performance-based, so there's no escalator clause based on you know, how many touchdowns you score or anything like that. The one thing that student-athletes are starting to learn through us, it's really about building your brand. Now, obviously, performance helps, right? Like James Jackson, solid player, but the guy gets a t-shirt made after a phenomenal interception. So how long will that last? We'll see. If he goes out and has another monster game, then he's going to build on his brand.
So what we've talked to student-athletes about is your NIL, you kind of get out of it what you put into it. So being able to have a presence on social media, being able to identify what your outcomes are, who the brands are that you like, that's where you're really going to grow these opportunities. But if you think because you score, you know, three touchdowns in a game that you're going to make more money, especially through our collective, that's illegal, we won't go there. What it does though is it can position yourself if you're here for year two, year three, we could always create other opportunities which is going to raise your earning potential.
Sabre Zoom: Does anyone else have questions? Have we missed anything that's glaring, Lo?
Lo Davis: No, I appreciate the platform. And I think for us ... I look at Twitter and social media and I hit your boards every so often and, you know, I'm humbled because I think I was naive to think everybody knew about CAV Futures. I was humble and naive to think that everybody knew that NIL work was being done at UVA. I would just say to this group and the board, as much as you can spread the word that the University is taking this very seriously. We're trending in the right direction in terms of funding.
We've got a long ways to go, but we're moving where we're not just trying to settle, we're trying to reach the pinnacle and it's okay. If we want to raise the same amount of money as Penn State and Notre Dame, we've been blessed to do so now we just need the supporters and the support to do that. The other thing I would just say is that we're going to try to be sustainable and adaptable. We want to be around for a long time. I didn't quit my job at VAF to be here for a couple of years ...
I really appreciate the platform and again, I can't share this enough and it's not smoke and mirrors. We're doing some really good things and some cool things. We just got to continue to spread the word. We hope that our sponsorship agreement with Virginia Sports, we'll continue to get us in the venues. We've got a commercial that's playing right now, two commercials that's out there locally so people are starting to hear Cav Futures. We've got commercials out there. That's on the pregame and post game shows. So the branding is happening. The education is happening. ... Feel free to go to our website CavFutures.com .
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