One of the most valuable coaching programs for University of Connecticut athletes has little to do with sports.
Dozens of student-athletes from the Division I University of Connecticut, including men’s basketball champions Donovan Clingan, Hassan Diarra and Adama Sanogo, have studied business development under the tutelage of David Noble, director of the Peter J. Wirth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Noble developed the course in 2021, around the time the NCAA lifted rules banning student-athletes from making money from endorsement deals or the use of their name, image and likeness. The class is designed for athletes who want to develop their personal brand into a business (though anyone can take it).
The NCAA rule changes “added urgency” to this type of instruction, Noble said. “It’s not just David Noble who’s been talking about how important this is. It’s Danny Hurley and others, right?”
UConn isn’t the only D1 school to add a personal branding course with athletes in mind: Duke University’s “Building a Global Audience” class dives deep into social media marketing, and Indiana University teaches “NIL Media Branding.”
We work on applying a variety of subjects to real-world business applications. they: Their names, their images, their likenesses.
David Noble
Noble says he thinks of his classes at the University of Connecticut as laboratories: They’re pass/fail and vary based on the student and the type of venture they want to pursue. Students have control over their ideas and can try different things, potentially fail multiple times, while receiving constructive feedback from their peers.
“It’s an experiential sandbox,” Noble said, “where failure is a necessary part of learning what to do and how to do it.” Through that “iterative approach,” “we work with them to apply different subjects to their real-world business, which happens to be… they: their names, their images, their likenesses.”
The class is offered by the University of Connecticut’s business school and often works with a staff of videographers and producers from the Worth Institute’s “Championship Lab,” which helps student entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. The lab is packed with resident creators and entrepreneurs (some of whom are alumni) who offer practical lessons on brand building, investing, content creation, and more. Instructors work one-on-one with students on everything from crafting pitch emails to polishing their brand to launching their own social media campaigns.
They then use their own experiences as material for class discussions, and Clingan reports back to his classmates during morning sessions after big games and post-game television interviews.
A representative for Mr. Clingan did not respond to an email seeking comment.
These sessions help all the students in the class, not just the stars, “prepare for the spotlight,” says Tara Watrous, the institute’s entrepreneurial transformation director and instructor of the class. “They’re still very young, and to some extent, this is the first time they’re thinking about these things.”
Watrous said some students, athletes and non-athletes alike, come to class with specific ideas they want to launch or develop, from short video series to merchandise. Others aren’t sure yet.
Sanogo started a fundraiser called Adamanation to encourage participation in basketball and help pay for the education of children in his native Mali, while Diarra, known for wearing a headband on the court, developed his own clothing line called “Headband Hass.”
“It’s really inspiring to see how much they’ve grown, how much more confident they are and how well they can articulate what they’re doing, even after just a year working with us,” Watrous said.
In addition to releasing his own branded merchandise, Diarra has also experimented with social media collaborations, partnering with another clothing brand, Find the Good, to create a series of social videos. Find the Good founder Jack Tarka, a 2022 University of Connecticut graduate, serves as entrepreneur in residence at the Worth Institute and frequently works with student-athletes who are building their portfolios.
“With Hassan, it was like, ‘We’re going to use our platform to help you share your story,'” Tarka said. “It was a way to let his personality show a little bit more. He’s a very funny guy, very interesting, and we want that impression to be there online and on social media, just as he is when he’s in the locker room and on campus.”
Diarra did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Tarka said that before the NIL rules were changed – the year before he graduated – such an opportunity was not even on most students’ minds.
“There was no incentive for athletes to try and create or build a personal brand because that was so far in the future,” he said. “Now there’s an incentive to start learning and practicing these skills because there’s interest in the whole world of athletes building and developing their personal brands.”
Use of the Platform
It’s not just famous athletes who are using their Championship Labs experience for business and charitable endeavors.
When Rachel Woodruff, a distance runner on the University of Connecticut cross country and track teams, first learned about Championship Labs at a student-athlete gathering during her junior year, she wasn’t particularly interested in social media and didn’t think much about the NIL deal. As a nutrition and exercise science major, she was focused on traditional lab work.
That year, Woodruff met with lab staff to plan a 100-mile training run to raise money for a high school food pantry in Saranac, New York. Staff helped her create a logo and launch a website for her fundraiser, Miles to Meals. Woodruff then promoted it on her social channels and launched the initiative. In the end, Miles to Meals raised $2,500.
“I didn’t get signed to any brand or make any money from it, but it was a really amazing opportunity to be able to use my platform to give back to society,” she said.
That prompted Woodruff to enroll in Noble’s class in fall 2023, where she began expanding her portfolio: She produced social videos for Find the Good and earlier this year landed a $500 NIL contract with education technology company Chegg to promote Student Mental Health Week.
A representative for Chegg did not respond to an email seeking comment.
“I have a lot of basketball players in my classes and obviously their platform is a lot bigger than mine, but just seeing what they do with that platform and how they navigate the NIL space…it’s been fun to learn through them and experiment,” she said.
Stanley Cross, a defensive back for the University of Connecticut football team, said he also learned a lot from the class, especially the discussion about “how you can make money just by being yourself.” Cross also signed a non-binding contract with Chegg earlier this year to promote Student Mental Health Week with Woodruff.
He said Noble and the guest lecturers have helped him think hard about what his post-retirement career might look like. “It helps you find yourself,” he said. “At the end of the day, every sport comes to an end, whether you go pro or not, so what can you do to help yourself? That’s what we discussed.”
Cross already has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Connecticut, but he plans to return to the university this fall to earn a second degree in sociology and play one more season on the football team. From there, he said, “God willing,” he hopes to play professional baseball.
“But I have some other ideas I’d like to do,” he said, “so we’ll see what happens.”
Woodruff is interning with Hammer & Axe Training this summer, producing social videos showcasing the group’s coaching expertise, and this fall she plans to enroll in a graduate program in sports management at the University of Connecticut, a career she said she might not have considered had she not taken an entrepreneurship class.
Woodruff said the partnerships and deals she secured were worth more to her than the dollar amount.
“Brand deals with cross country runners are obviously not as valuable as those with athletes like Paige Bueckers,” she said. “Understanding how I can use social media as a tool and in a job like an internship is something I’ve really enjoyed.”
Fostering autonomy and support
Students said Championship Lab’s initiatives and courses have helped them understand the value of their personal brand and how to put it out there with intention, giving student-athletes and influencers a sense of agency.
It also provides a supportive professional network.
For athletes, like entrepreneurs, the job can be lonely, Noble said. With greater visibility comes greater criticism, especially on online platforms. And as your name and brand grow, it can be harder to avoid being saddled with negativity.
“On one level, students who make these choices are rejecting the status quo, the standards, the norms, the expectations of others, and pursuing what they feel is the right path for them,” Noble says. But in doing so, “they lose the protection of everyone else,” which she says is like the difference between singing in a choir and performing solo.
Tarka, the entrepreneur in residence, said the Worth Institute provides a community and a “positive feedback loop” for young people as they set out on their own. “Everybody’s doing a little bit different, but they all come together and say, ‘Hey, I’m doing something different, too,'” he said. “And I think in all of that, you find some kind of family, a weird kind of family.”
Developing that kind of confidence in school could help athletes and future influencers feel more comfortable going into TV interviews and high-pressure conversations they might have with agents, brands and team owners down the road.
Noble said students who have taken the class often return, even if they don’t re-enroll. “We have students who aren’t in the course who come, and we have other colleagues who come,” he said. “Because it’s not the same as it was before.”
Noble said current students, alumni, other athletes and community members are eager to hear from the speakers and learn about the students’ projects, with some even volunteering their time and money to support the students’ ideas.
“I think that’s the ultimate test of whether you’re getting value from something, right?” he says. “It’s definitely something unique.”
