What Snoop Wants: Arizona Bowl Gives NIL Opportunities to Players From Colorado State, Miami (Ohio)

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Snoop Dogg has almost as many ties to football as he does to rap music.

The entertainer coached youth football for years and created the Snoop League, an after-school program for youth in Los Angeles. Snoop has been a guest analyst on football broadcasts, and his son, Cordell Broadus, played Division I football.

When Snoop took his latest step, becoming a bowl game sponsor, he had one requirement: Find a way for all players in the game to receive Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) money.

“This was Snoop’s idea,” said Kym Adair, executive director of the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl presented by Gin & Juice. “He had conversations with people he knows in the college football world and I got a call saying he wanted us to be the first bowl to commit, and that’s what we did.”

The hosts are Colorado State and Miami (Ohio), who finish their seasons Saturday at Arizona Stadium in the Arizona Bowl. The bowl is classified as a 501(c)(3), so all proceeds go to charity. And since it’s one of the few bowls not affiliated with ESPN, it opens the door to unique sponsorship opportunities.

The bowl was previously sponsored by Barstool Sports, and the digital media company used its own cast of characters on the broadcast, which was streamed on its digital platforms.

Snoop Dogg is taking over this year. The rapper/entertainer is the latest celebrity to sponsor a bowl, following in the footsteps of Jimmy Kimmel and Rob Gronkowski at the LA Bowl.

And Snoop being Snoop, he wanted to put his own spin on his own dish.

“College football fans are tired of the constant chatter about the NIL, conference realignment, coaching movement, transfer portal and super conferences,” Snoop said this in a video posted on social media. “So it’s time we get back to the roots of college football — when it was focused on the colleges, the players and the competition, the community, the fan experience and the fest.”

With that will be a NIL component.

The bowl can’t pay players just to play in the bowl, but both teams participated in football clinics on Friday and are getting paid for their services. Other bowls have given individual players NIL options, but this is believed to be the first to offer it to all players on both teams.

“I love the fact that the Arizona Bowl is unique and trying new things, and obviously having Snoop here is unique,” Colorado State coach Jay Norvell said. “The NIL component, that’s the future. That’s what football has become now. We think it’s great for our kids, and then the interaction with the kids is the hidden gem of it all.”

The NIL component of the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl comes a month after a similar effort at The Players Era Festival basketball tournament in Las Vegas. The eight-team tournament said it paid out $9 million in NIL money to participating players for activities outside the competition. It also offered $50 million in NIL opportunities over the next three years for services and activities consistent with NCAA rules.

Are the Players Era Festival and the Arizona Bowl the start of a new future? It is not out of the question in big school athletics, where schools are already preparing the era of revenue sharing with players next year.

“Revenue sharing between the players and the athletic departments is already on the horizon, so whether that replaces these types of events or is completely separate is yet to be determined,” Adair said. “We’re just trying to be flexible, ahead of the curve and make an impact that we can.”

Just the way Snoop wants it.

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