According to U.S. Dept. of Education figures, UCLA topped all Big Ten schools by receiving $692 million in donations from 2022-23.
But that zeal for lavishing cash did not carry over to the school’s athletic department, which ranked fourth from the bottom of the conference with just $16 million in donations over the same period.
Like a quarterback calling an audible, Chase Griffin wants to change those financial fortunes for his Bruins teammates.
“Our No. 1 goal,” said the backup quarterback who has long been a star in the name, image and likeness space, “is to make UCLA football the best team in the Big Ten.”
Griffin unveiled his plans for the transformation Thursday night at the W Hotel near campus when he launched the 1919 Players Fund before a group of partners in the venture and roughly half the football team.
The player-run NIL fund, whose name is a nod to the year the school was founded, aims to help the Bruins build their personal brands as ambassadors for products and services while also giving back through philanthropy.
Is it a collective? Well, yes and no.
“People can call it what they want,” Griffin said. “I see it more as a content studio, I see us almost as a talent agency where we develop UCLA football players and we give them the means of creating content that creates returns on investment with the brands that we work with.”
Early partners include the investment advisory firm SteelPeak Wealth, the Westwood Village Improvement Assn. and Movember, the organization centered around men’s health awareness. Griffin said he built those partnerships through the vast network of resources he forged while becoming a two-time NIL athlete of the year.
Showing his teammates the types of deals they could get with Westwood businesses, Griffin played a video showing himself biting into an ice cream cookie sandwich at Diddy Riese and a slice of cheese pizza at Danny Boy’s Famous Original Pizza.
Asked if the 1919 Players Fund dovetailed with Men of Westwood, UCLA’s school-sponsored collective, Griffin suggested that he favored a partnership over a rivalry.
“If they have content that needs to be executed, let us know,” Griffin said. “We’re hungry for opportunities, our players are showing that by coming here on a Thursday night that we had off and we have the ability to create any content and create return on investment for any brand.”
Among the speakers was former UCLA safety James Washington, a two-time Rose Bowl and two-time Super Bowl champion with the Dallas Cowboys who emphasized the importance of building wealth beyond a possible NFL career.
Read more: How UCLA’s Chase Griffin became ‘the face of the athlete voice of NIL’
“Out of my class,” Washington said, “dudes that didn’t play on Sunday — I got three billionaires, 10 millionaires that I’m trying to figure out how to get them back here for you, you see what I’m saying? So when you look around, the endgame is just not playing football, the endgame is running your own business … it’s giving back to your community, it’s reaching down and grabbing the next one to lift the next one up.”
Griffin mentioned UCLA’s standing as the nation’s top public school and long history of trailblazers in athletics as reasons the school should lead the way in NIL endeavors. Underscoring the need for everyone in the UCLA community to contribute, Griffin encouraged fans to email him directly at chase@thegriffin.org.
“We’re not in a conference where we’re lucky to be there,” Griffin said, “we’re in a conference where they’re lucky to have us, and in order for us to compete in the way that we need to compete to make that statement ring true and to represent UCLA the way it ought to be represented, we have to make sure that we have programs in place like the 1919 Players Fund there to make sure that UCLA has a chance.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
