January 31, 2025
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Alabama Football Star Shares Valuable Advice On Flourishing NIL Deals

Alabama Crimson Tide star Ryan Williams encourages college football athletes to seek NIL deals that are the right fit to build their brand.

College sports are dominated by NIL in a way that has gotten away from focus on name, image, and likeness as it was intended by the initial NCAA ruling that allowed players that right of publicity.

Wide receiver Ryan Williams, a college football star for the Alabama Crimson Tide, has refocused attention with his recent advice to fellow athletes.

Brand deals are all but lost in the shuffle of NIL collectives and impending revenue-sharing, but Williams has secured prominent partnerships with Uber Eats and Hollister.

Speaking with On3 Sports, Williams indicated that he sought out brands that aligned with his interests in his sage guidance to other players.

“If I was giving someone else advice, or just what I have learned, it is that if you have interest in something, go attack those interests because you never know what you can get out of it,” Williams said. “If you don’t try, nothing’s going to happen. I would say if you have an interest in anything, go try to obtain those interests.”

Williams has a fondness for clothing, referencing a well-known Deion Sanders quote that emphasizes the importance of looking good, feeling good, playing well, and receiving good compensation. That all fits under his partnership with Hollister, as he modeled for their new athletic line that launched last week.

He said his mentality to seek out and “attack his interests” came from former teammate Jalen Milroe, who encouraged Williams to follow his trajectory.

“That’s kind of where I learned, if you really have an interest in something, take advantage of it and go attack it because he [Milroe] has a lot of interests,” Williams said. “Whatever he has an interest in, he’s going to go conquer. That’s the main thing I learned from him, but also not just taking—because the NIL space can sometimes be confused with just money, money, money, money.

Importantly, Williams emphasized relationship-building as a critical aspect of navigating the NIL landscape as another lesson gleaned from Milroe.

“It’s about building not just a short-term relationship, but a relationship that you want to carry,” Williams said. Kind of like the loyalty thing and how he [Milroe] stayed for four years at Alabama and how Malachi Moore stayed for five years at Alabama. It’s more so like, if I want to do something with this brand, I don’t want to just do it for three weeks and just be done. I really want to build a relationship and focus on it long-term.”

Brand deals of this nature aren’t necessarily attainable for every college football player, but Williams’ advice should ring true in college football that keeps inching closer to a professional model. It’s treated like a business, and Williams is attacking his name, image, and likeness with that notion in min