NIL
How NIL changed Duke QB Darian Mensah’s life
College Football Enquirer co-hosts Ross Dellenger, Andy Staples and Steven Godfrey discuss the groundbreaking NIL deal between Darian Mensah and Duke that changed Mensah’s life. Hear the full conversation on the “College Football Enquirer” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
I love a quote that tells the story.
Um, I think you’ve got several in here, but it’s really simple if you get down into it, Ross, where it says, my kids watch me crawl out of that hole.
When you’re stuck in poverty, all I wanted to do was get out of that poverty.
That’s it.
That’s all.
There’s a nice little, you’ve got a little piece in here we say, hey, like, you know what, that’s Syria’s mom.
Yeah, that’s Naomi.
She’s now in a studio apartment.
They have a money manager.
They got bankers, they got, they got people.
Guys, just the amount of quarterbacks that make it to the first round of the NFL draft, which is an infinitesimal amount, right?
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Just so tiny.
Only half of those even make it to a second contract.
And the reason why a second contract is important is that’s, that’s your life-changing generational money for a family.
So this is, I kind of want to sit with this for a second because we’ve talked so much about how money’s changing college sports in a very alarmist way, but this kid, if he, if he blows his knee out in two weeks, if he’s just mid-level, if he, if he just ends up as a backup in the league for two years, has enough wealth now to fundamentally change his family forever.
You know, she obviously needed a lot of, a lot of help with this, um.
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Her, her, her, her father and her, I think her sister and, you know, her sister’s husband helped a lot, bought cleats for Derry and took him to, took him to games, the family members and even the neighborhood parents would take them, um, take them to school and games and so she had sort of this at least a little bit of a support system to help her, but it, it sounded like a grind for sure and she sounded when talking to her.
It, it sort of sounded like um a woman who never thought she would get out of all that.
You know, like, like when she, like she can’t, she, she, you know, we had a, it was an hour-long conversation and I think three different times or so, right, she had to stop and pause to, to break down emotionally because I don’t think she had really talked to anybody because it just happened, right?
They, he became a millionaire in January.
Before that, he had hardly any money to his name and then he became a multimillionaire, right?