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Did they quit/get fired? What happened exactly?

I feel bad for Irvine - he's been with what - 4-5 different media outlets the last few years?

(02-01-2024 03:21 PM)uab278 Wrote:  I actually think it was more of a swipe at Scarbinksy and Goodman who only wrote a story after the Memphis game.

No. Scarbinsky and Goodman aren't beat writers.

(02-01-2024 04:33 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  Did they quit/get fired? What happened exactly?

It became the official NIL org for UAB athletics. UAB gained control. UAB decided that the donor base didnt warrant having a writer on staff to cover UAB Sports as a means to grow said donor base.

(02-01-2024 06:45 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  

(02-01-2024 04:33 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  Did they quit/get fired? What happened exactly?

It became the official NIL org for UAB athletics. UAB gained control. UAB decided that the donor base didnt warrant having a writer on staff to cover UAB Sports as a means to grow said donor base.

Well that was really dumb and cutting off the nose to spite the fact, typical of UAB.

(02-01-2024 06:45 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  

(02-01-2024 04:33 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  Did they quit/get fired? What happened exactly?

It became the official NIL org for UAB athletics. UAB gained control. UAB decided that the donor base didnt warrant having a writer on staff to cover UAB Sports as a means to grow said donor base.

I don't think that's what happened.

Magic City Impact is owned by Student Athlete NIL (SANIL) who manages collectives at schools across the country (examples include Syracuse, ODU, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, etc). They are who paid Tim and Steve, not UAB. Tim led Digital Content across all the SANIL collectives, not just UAB. Even if UAB was the pilot for content with Steve - Tim was clearly hired for an objective to handle content production for all the collectives as a means of generating activity/revenue. This appears that it was a decision by SANIL not to go down the path that MCI was going as a whole and thus, the elimination of the roles and content.

Magic City Impact wasn't some local startup that was founded solely for UAB - though maybe it seemed that way due to the local connections of the employees...it's owned and managed by a bigger organization and you can see that corporate structure here: https://studentathletenil.com/about/

It's explicitly shown on MCI's FAQ that this isn't owned by UAB and can't be controlled by UAB:

Quote:Magic City Impact is not affiliated with the UAB in any way. In fact, the University is prohibited by state law from arranging third-party compensation for student-athletes as it relates to NIL. Magic City Impact is a third party entity, governed by a Board of Directors, that supports the needs of the student-athletes through an engaging and collaborative partnership between the fans, alumni, and business community.

It's a startup business, like any other - started by a guy that made many other businesses who has no real ties to Birmingham or UAB in any way whatsoever. I imagine the timeline was that Tim was hired by this company because of his background either because they were looking to go into the content game or he pitched the idea to them...then he made the connection to UAB for the company and got Magic City Impact to exist. Then he had the authority to hire Steve on as a way to pilot the content strategy.

UAB doesn't have control over this at all except to either break off the relationship entirely or to not give specific employees of SANIL access to media credentials. They would never own the "Magic City Impact" name or website. I'm not sure if other collectives also had content folks under Tim, but I'd imagine they are all gone too if so and we only care about Tim/Steve.

For example, the "Irish United" NIL Collective managed by the same group has a lot of the same offerings under their membership:

Quote:*Exclusive Basketball Student-Athlete Interviews & Content
*Access To Exclusive Supporter Events
*Access to Basketball Student-Athlete Meet & Greet Sessions
*Raffle Entry For Autographed Memorabilia

But their Twitter has only 33 followers and hasn't posted since November 8th, 2022 (only 5 days after their initial "launch"). That's a fanbase that is considerably larger than us. All of these NIL Collectives have a cookie-cutter site with the same language and offerings just with a different Boards and photos swapped in. I think the difference with MCI was Tim's personal connection to it and ability to bring Steve in to do content.

They say 85-90% of the funds generated go directly to NIL/Student Athletes, but they aren't a non-profit organization (probably smart because it looks like legally that won't be allowed in the future anyway). But their business model is clearly based on scaling massively fast and it doesn't look to me like they are doing that successfully.

It appears to me to be a company founded by a guy with a sports/legal background that saw an opportunity to create another agency in the wild west of NIL to generate turnkey sales opps to athletic programs and brought in a bunch of sports agency consultants/professionals to fill out the needs of the team fast enough to scoop up agreements with programs while the iron was still hot and nobody wanted to miss out on NIL.

Though I never subscribed for a few reasons, it does appear that UAB fans got far more value out of their SANIL collective than most others have gotten.

(02-02-2024 04:31 PM)demiveeman Wrote:  

(02-01-2024 06:45 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  

(02-01-2024 04:33 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  Did they quit/get fired? What happened exactly?

It became the official NIL org for UAB athletics. UAB gained control. UAB decided that the donor base didnt warrant having a writer on staff to cover UAB Sports as a means to grow said donor base.

I don't think that's what happened.

Magic City Impact is owned by Student Athlete NIL (SANIL) who manages collectives at schools across the country (examples include Syracuse, ODU, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, etc). They are who paid Tim and Steve, not UAB. Tim led Digital Content across all the SANIL collectives, not just UAB. Even if UAB was the pilot for content with Steve - Tim was clearly hired for an objective to handle content production for all the collectives as a means of generating activity/revenue. This appears that it was a decision by SANIL not to go down the path that MCI was going as a whole and thus, the elimination of the roles and content.

Magic City Impact wasn't some local startup that was founded solely for UAB - though maybe it seemed that way due to the local connections of the employees...it's owned and managed by a bigger organization and you can see that corporate structure here: https://studentathletenil.com/about/

It's explicitly shown on MCI's FAQ that this isn't owned by UAB and can't be controlled by UAB:

Quote:Magic City Impact is not affiliated with the UAB in any way. In fact, the University is prohibited by state law from arranging third-party compensation for student-athletes as it relates to NIL. Magic City Impact is a third party entity, governed by a Board of Directors, that supports the needs of the student-athletes through an engaging and collaborative partnership between the fans, alumni, and business community.

It's a startup business, like any other - started by a guy that made many other businesses who has no real ties to Birmingham or UAB in any way whatsoever. I imagine the timeline was that Tim was hired by this company because of his background either because they were looking to go into the content game or he pitched the idea to them...then he made the connection to UAB for the company and got Magic City Impact to exist. Then he had the authority to hire Steve on as a way to pilot the content strategy.

UAB doesn't have control over this at all except to either break off the relationship entirely or to not give specific employees of SANIL access to media credentials. They would never own the "Magic City Impact" name or website. I'm not sure if other collectives also had content folks under Tim, but I'd imagine they are all gone too if so and we only care about Tim/Steve.

For example, the "Irish United" NIL Collective managed by the same group has a lot of the same offerings under their membership:

Quote:*Exclusive Basketball Student-Athlete Interviews & Content
*Access To Exclusive Supporter Events
*Access to Basketball Student-Athlete Meet & Greet Sessions
*Raffle Entry For Autographed Memorabilia

But their Twitter has only 33 followers and hasn't posted since November 8th, 2022 (only 5 days after their initial "launch"). That's a fanbase that is considerably larger than us. All of these NIL Collectives are cookie-cutter site with the same language and offerings just with a different board and photos swapped in. I think the difference with MCI was Tim's personal connection to it and ability to bring Steve in to do content.

They say 85-90% of the funds generated go directly to NIL/Student Athletes, but they aren't a non-profit organization (probably smart because it looks like legally that won't be allowed in the future anyway). But their business model is clearly based on scaling massively and it doesn't look to me like they are doing that successfully from what I can see.

It appears to me to be a company founded by a guy with a sports/legal background that saw an opportunity to jump into the wild west of NIL to make something turnkey/sales-oriented to athletic programs and brought in a bunch of sports agency consultants/professionals to fill out the needs of the team fast enough to scoop up agreements with programs while the iron was still hot and nobody wanted to miss out.

Though I never subscribed for a few reasons, it does appear that UAB fans got far more value out of their SANIL collective than most others have gotten.

I really hope this isn't some shell company or money laundering scam or something like the AAF where the owner got the money he wanted and created the framework for an app and then decided to shut it down before the season ended.

Didn't realize the other NIL sites weren't doing as well. Just shows how starved we UAB fans are for UAB content.

https://x.com/TheTimStephens/status/1753...57980?s=20

Looks like Magic City Impact is making the FB players post on their IG about MCI.
They still haven't updated their website with any articles or events; so this is strange to come out of nowhere.

I wish they made this push when we were all behind it. They burned some bridges.

(05-29-2024 08:57 AM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  I wish they made this push when we were all behind it. They burned some bridges.

Yep, they should have done this last year when it first started.

Here is what I think is going to happen, someone either at UAB FB or MCI (or their parent company) will gaslight fans and say they are closing/deleting the NIL site because of lack of fan engagement and funds - when in reality they were great for 2 months then got rid of all the writers and for almost half a year now, haven't had any incentives to sign up and give money.

Maybe they are about to change things around with football season around the corner, but I doubt it.