Brandon Lee was a starting linebacker for the Missouri Tigers for the 2014-18 seasons, well before the NIL was a realistic concept.
Now, Lee is returning to the university to serve as the department’s first assistant athletics director for name, image and likeness.
“Brandon’s fundraising background and passion for Mizzou from his time as a student-athlete makes him the ideal candidate to lead our evolving NIL program,” Missouri athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois said in a press release. “Maximizing every NIL opportunity for our student-athletes is critically important, and we are positioning Mizzou to be one of the nation’s innovators in NIL in the months and years ahead.”
Lee says he sees this as an opportunity for him to be “innovative and strategic” in the NIL space, as he firmly believes that student-athletes should be paid for their name, image and likeness not only because of their athletic performance, but because of how it will help them out in life.
“I feel it’s a great opportunity for student-athletes to begin working on their life skills,” Lee said. “I call them life skills because a lot of those financial literacy components that go into NIL and that education; student-athletes don’t generally get that until they step into the real world when they get their first job and they hear about taxes and investing. They start thinking about budgeting and saving a lot more.”
