COLUMBIA, Mo. — Within a few days of announcing his commitment to Missouri’s football team, former Miami Hurricanes quarterback Jake Garcia looked into his smartphone and recorded the same message many of his new teammates had posted on social media that week, pledging their loyalty to another team.

“I’m proud to be an Every True Tiger Foundation athlete,” Garcia told his Instagram followers, echoed online by dozens more Mizzou football and basketball players in recent weeks.

Garcia has yet to take a snap for the Tigers or even give an interview to local media. But as college sports maneuvers through the second full year of the name, image, likeness (NIL) movement, Garcia’s commitment to Mizzou’s newly branded preferred NIL collective coincides with his commitment to coach Eli Drinkwitz’s MU’s football program — and not by coincidence. No different than Garcia, several Mizzou upperclassmen who chose another season in Columbia over the NCAA transfer portal or the NFL draft recorded similar testimonials, pitching their allegiance to the Every True Tiger Foundation. Again, not a coincidence.

ETTF, filed as a non-profit corporation through the state last August, is a charity organization that’s an offshoot of the initial for-profit NIL collective formed in 2021 called Advancing Missouri Athletes.

Designed to pool money from donors to fund endorsement deals for Mizzou athletes — all now legal under revised NCAA rules and state legislation — the collective can work directly with MU to pay athletes with funds independent from the athletics department or university coffers. With ETTF now a 501(c)3 organization, contributors can make tax-deductible donations and earmark their money toward Mizzou teams of their choice. As of January, around 25% of MU’s 500-plus athletes had signed with ETTF, mostly football and men’s basketball players, ETTF CEO Nick Garner said.

Under ETTF’s new structure — with former Mizzou basketball player Laurence Bowers serving as executive director and former football player Bud Sasser as director of operations — the collective derives funds from three core sources: major donors, corporate donations and a subscription model, where members can pledge smaller monthly amounts.

Garner, a longtime executive at Learfield, the collegiate multimedia colossus, took over as the collective’s CEO in December after moving back to Columbia from Texas, where he oversaw Learfield’s first foray into NIL.

“This isn’t just a fly-by-night operation,” Garner said. “We’re working in tandem with (MU) athletics. Becoming their preferred collective is really key piece for us. We want to support all sports. Yes, everybody wants to talk about football and men’s basketball, and those are primary revenue generators. That’s where you see a lot of the NIL money going. But we want to make it user friendly for people to say, ‘OK, how do I support women’s golf?’”

It’s still against NCAA rules for NIL compensation to be used as recruiting inducements for prospective athletes and/or transfers, but under the state of Missouri’s NIL law, college coaches and school administrators can engage directly with the NIL collectives. Recruits can’t sign NIL collective contracts before formally choosing a school, but NIL opportunities have clearly become factors in recruiting decisions.

Every Mizzou athlete who signs with ETTF works closely with Sasser and receives a playbook that summarizes their contractual obligations to work with charities, along with resources for paying taxes, opening bank accounts and finding financial advisors. Athletes and/or their representatives negotiate their own compensation through the collective. ETTF does not disclose individual contracts or dollar amounts players are making.

While the last two years have produced reports and rumors of monstrous seven-figure payments to athletes in other markets, most of which can’t be substantiated, Garner declined to say how much money the ETTF collective has raised.

“I think from our perspective, Mizzou’s collective is very healthy,” he said. “I would say one of the issues out there right now is mischaracterization. There’s a lot of things out there that other collectives are talking about. Some of the stuff you can’t believe what kids are being offered. But I will tell you that as it stands today, our coaches and our administration feels like we have the resources to provide opportunities for our student athletes.”

There are other smaller collectives designed to benefit Mizzou athletes — and many athletes have agreed to individual NIL endorsement deals with various companies, such as wide receiver Luther Burden III‘s Old Vienna potato chips. But while other schools have multiple collectives jostling for donations, ETTF is the only major collective working directly with MU athletics.

“Competing for the dollar is an issue. We just don’t have it here,” Garner said. “And so as we continue to gain further alignment, it’s only going to get better. We can’t talk about individual deals, but I can tell you that we’ve kept the kids we want and we’ve gotten the kids we’ve wanted. That’s a testament to the health of the collective.”

Garner meets twice weekly with Mizzou officials to discuss the NIL program. Athletics director Desireé Reed-Francois has a team of department staffers working daily on NIL matters, including former football player Brandon Lee, now an assistant AD, plus two full-time content creators.

There are NIL cautionary tales everywhere you turn, most notably the saga of quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada. In recent months, a collective tied to the University of Florida reneged on an eight-figure deal with the four-star prospect — $13.85 million over four years, The Athletic reported — and Rashada has since backed out of his pledge to Florida and resurfaced at Arizona State.

Reed-Francois believes Mizzou’s structure is built to avoid those messy headlines.

ETTF “is backed by some very smart, loyal, generous benefactors of our university and ones that we have a high degree of trust in,” she said. “They’re running it under Nick’s leadership like a good CEO. It’s critically important that we have collaborative communication every step of the way. That’s the key to this whole thing. It’s too dynamic of a landscape. We’ve got to constantly communicate.”

Reed-Francois refers to Mizzou’s athletes as “550 entrepreneurs.”

“There’s nothing more important to me than our student athletes,” she added. “And this benefits them. So we are going to be 100% behind them and this initiative. But are there some bumps in the road? Absolutely. Any time you have some massive change like this, there will be bumps along the road. But that’s why we’ve got to have incredible communication.”

The father of an underclassman on the Mizzou football team who is contracted with ETTF told the Post-Dispatch he had initial concerns about the collective but it’s been a positive experience so far.

“It’s hard to tell what’s true if you read about what’s going on at other schools, like Texas A&M and others that have all this money,” said the father, who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity while discussing the topic. “But I will say this: Missouri is competitive. Anybody who says they’re not, I would disagree.”

When Mizzou’s NIL collective first launched, the player’s father worried that different deals might cause locker-room tension, but said, “I don’t get the impression that there are any issues like that that I’m aware of.”

“There might have been a couple,” he added. “But I think overall, they’ve done a good job of everybody understanding what their role is. That’s the biggest thing. Everybody has an opportunity. If they understand that, then I think you’ll keep that team cohesiveness together.”

“We will always be a collective that does exactly what we say we’re going to do,” Garner said. “We’re never going to promise to get something that we can’t afford. Eli and Dennis (Gates, MU’s men’s basketball coach) feel the same way. They’re passionate about it, but they’re smart and they don’t want kids coming into a locker room just wanting to be about what, ‘Where’s my NIL opportunities?’”

In St. Louis, a core of Mizzou boosters has formed a grassroots extension of ETTF they’ve called MIZ- LOU. Led by alumnus Phillip Bender, the group has grown to around 30 donors committed to pledging $20,000 annually toward NIL deals for MU athletes from the St. Louis area. Their goal, Garner said, is to reach 100 members, which would amount to $2 million per year toward the collective.

Over time, the collective would like to see similar branches bloom in Kansas City, Chicago and Dallas.

“Mizzou’s got a loyal fan base with a lot of money,” Garner said. “The SEC did not invite Mizzou out of the goodness of their heart.”