Penn State’s NIL Failures Cause Shrewsberry to Leave

I had an abscessed tooth once. It sucked. 

For about a week, I felt something was wrong, on and off pains here and there. Nothing that a little bit of Tylenol wouldn’t take care of at first. I continued to ignore it, let it go and then it got more consistently painful. 

The pain builds and builds and builds. You regret not going to the dentist sooner. You regret not having that cavity filled a while back – the same one that’s now turned into the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. 

And while that pain explodes through your mouth, it consumes your every thought. And right about then you start to feel the fever from the bacteria getting into the rest of your body, making your life an absolute living hell. 

You see where I’m going with this right? 

Penn State Athletic Director Patrick Kraft has an abscessed tooth and it’s finally caught up with him. After months of Penn State not taking name, image and likeness more seriously, it just disrupted the entire state of his basketball program, rearing its head as a very real problem for the first time. 

Sure Micah Shrewsberry is off to Notre Dame because he’s originally from the Hoosier state. Sure ACC basketball is, well, ACC basketball – even in its off years – and it may appeal to the basketball junkie a bit more than struggling with Big Ten referees every night.

But by all accounts, Penn State’s lack of coordination in the NIL department just cost it an incredible basketball coach that the Fighting Irish are very lucky to have. Since NIL came out, Penn State hasn’t gotten its act together. 

At the beginning, in the court of public opinion, it seemed like there was warring over which NIL collective Penn State fans should donate to. There were several but none rose to the top. That’s something that Kraft can’t control. However, he can weigh in and that’s what he did by naming Success With Honor its preferred partner in the space. 

What has Penn State, or Success With Honor, done since then to support the mission? Not much. 

After their initial splash back in March of 2022 with some big time alumni – including Lisa Salters, Michael Robinson and Todd Blackledge, many seemed relieved that Penn State had finally launched what appeared to be not just a collective but the collective to support Penn State student-athletes. 

Yet, it seemingly has missed the mark.

Prior to the Auburn football game, there was no real acknowledgement of it inside Beaver Stadium. However, a very aggressive video at Jordan-Hare Stadium about Tigers’ collective had to have caught the attention of someone inside Penn State Athletics. By the following weekend, the 107K Strong inside Beaver Stadium were watching a commercial that played over both jumbotrons. There were also small video ads on the scoreboard throughout games that displayed the collective’s logo. 

But if you aren’t really in the know, then you probably don’t know what it is. You might think it’s some antiquated callback to the Joe Paterno era, which the name alludes to. The average Penn State fan, who maybe comes to one game a season, probably doesn’t know what that phrase means outside of Paterno’s motto. The name fulfills many older Penn Staters’ request of “honoring Joe” and not necessarily the purpose, of supporting current Penn State student-athletes.

The collective hasn’t done much to help itself in the digital space either. StuffSomersSays.com’s Facebook page – something I admittingly haven’t put a ton of time into prior to launching the site – has more likes than the Success with Honor’s page. It’s an untapped area of growth that the collective is missing on big time. Facebook is where Penn State’s older, often wealthier, fans hang out. People go nuts in comment sections for Penn State news. It’s a social media manager’s dream to have a Penn State page.

The collective’s Twitter account, where a lot of Penn Staters also hang out digitally, has just over 2,000 followers, which may seem like a lot but places like Roar Lions Roar, which doesn’t even have a website anymore, dwarf that and still hold captivated audiences. 

SWH’s Twitter has largely been quiet in the last year as well, with only 455 tweets. There were no tweets about individual NCAA Wrestling Champions, which is surprising given that the collective supports the athletes and not necessarily the teams.

And between THON weekend and the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament Final, there were no tweets. Zero. 

In that same time period, there were countless games played, including some of the most important basketball games in years. For Pete’s sake, one of their most recent tweets wishes Penn State men’s hockey luck as they head into the NCAA “Semifinals” implying the team has already made the Frozen Four. 

Open up an incognito tab and a quick search for “Penn State NIL Collective” will yield results to articles but not the Success With Honor page. Only a search for “Success With Honor” yields those results, once again requiring you to know what it is. 

The visibility isn’t there. And it doesn’t just fall on the collective either. Take Penn State’s rival Ohio State. Search for “Ohio State NIL Collective” and the top result is a landing page on Ohio State’s official athletics website directing Buckeyes to their core collectives. Their top collectives then immediately appear right below in the search results. 

Once you make your way to Success With Honor‘s site, it takes a second to figure out where you’re supposed to fork over your cash. There is no direct call for funds. Instead, you need to hit the “Subscribe” button where you can begin the confusing process of choosing which team you want your money to go to, before ultimately doing just that. 

Compare that experience to Michigan’s Valiant Management Group. Before you have to even scroll, you’re directly prompted to “support the team.”

To give Success With Honor the benefit of the doubt, ironically this evening about an hour after Shrewsberry’s departure became clear, the collective sent an email out previewing their new site, Success-With-Honor.com. It does have a clear “Donate” button, but all of that marketing, like going virtually dark on Twitter or not running awareness or conversion ads on Facebook, isn’t going to gather the average Penn State fans’ eye and it’s certainly not going to improve those contribution rates. 

On Kraft’s side, he’s said it’s a priority time and time again. 

But it appears it wasn’t.

Take Shrewsberry’s quote from an interview with Blue-White Illustrated in December. [Editor’s note: A tip of the hat to PennStateHoops.com for calling it out in a Twitter thread this evening.]

“I can’t speak for everybody, but I would say of 14 teams in the Big Ten, we’re probably 14. Maybe 13,” Shrewsberry said. “So it’s just about who we want to be as a program. What are we willing to say is going to be our standard? 
“Because, I can be as good of a coach in the world, but if you don’t have as good of players, it doesn’t matter. Or, if you do a great job with your development, you find a kid, you develop him, and then somebody comes in and they have something for him, that’s kids, that’s life right now, and that’s what’s happening.”

That clear lack of coordination falls directly on Kraft. That’s flat out embarrassing when Penn State loves to boast it has the largest dues paying alumni association in the world. 

At press conference in the winter, Kraft told reports that he doesn’t “lose as much sleep over anymore” but now he will have to lose sleep over the fact it was the reason why Shrewsberry left. 

It’s not like the signs weren’t there either. Time and time again, we’ve heard from Penn State football coach James Franklin about how NIL is an issue, how it’s a place that Penn State needed to figure out, and figure out fast. He was willing to fight and it’s evident that wasn’t a deal breaker for him as other job offers came up over the last few season. 

But Franklin or Shrewsberry shouldn’t have to publicly fight off the playing surface to get the support they deserved in the NIL department. The results they’ve provided have proven there was no need for that.  

In today’s market, it shouldn’t be an uphill battle for a coach. No wonder Shrewsberry left. Why fight that battle?

How is he going to position Penn State to recruits when he is out here saying Penn State ranks behind schools like Rutgers and even Northwestern? How is he expected to compete in today’s world with the giants like Duke and Kentucky or even the likes the Buckeyes and Wolverines?

You can’t hide from that. 

Looking toward South Bend, the Irish faithful have put together their own specific basketball collective in addition to countless football collectives. Of course Shrewsberry was going to leave when that offer came to the table. It’s a place where people actually care about basketball. Why wouldn’t you want to go to a place that offers passionate support in your job? 

There’s no doubt that Shrewsberry’s heard the stories about how Penn State basketball has had to vacate the BJC to go practice elsewhere so your mom’s favorite rock band can set up for their upcoming show. There’s no doubt that Shrewsberry looked at the type of money coming into the NIL program and said that the Penn State opportunity wasn’t for him. 

And it’s a shame because we know this place can shell out the cash. 

This is a passionate alumni base that extends across the globe. Gone are the days over Penn Staters “not having money.” It feels like every commercial break at Beaver Stadium includes some old rich person being trotted out onto the field as their name is announced because of their “generous contribution to the Nittany Lion Club.” 

That passionate fan base has never been more plugged into its basketball program like the way it was over the first 20 or so days in March. 

Now that opportunity is gone. Stopped. Zero. Non-existent. Penn State has to start back from the beginning all over again. 

Why? Because Kraft failed to get the NIL cavity filled.

And if that cavity is now an abscess, the fever is the Penn State basketball faithful that feel dejected tonight, some of which are feeling it for the first time. 

So get the antibiotics and get them fast before this happens again. 

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