ADRIANNA: Welcome back to Balancing the Brand. I'm your host, Adrianna Kilian, and this is the podcast where we go beyond college athletics, looking at student athlete mental health and NIL monetary pressure. For this episode, I'm joined by Alonzo Jones. He's the Associate Athletic Director for inclusion and Championship Life at Arizona State University since March of 2016. According to ASU Sun Devil athletics web page, he oversees the development and application of programs that help mentor and develop Sun Devil student athletes. The Championship Life program at ASU is offered to student athletes in a workshop format. The program delivers content that focuses on the students’ academic level over the four-year period they attend the university. It provides services like academic coaching and specialist support. It also has workspaces available like computer labs and study rooms.

ALONZO JONES: Championship Life is a part of a department called office of student athlete development that has two functions. One is to support the academic progress of students, and that's through tutoring, mentoring, registration for classes, you know, eligibility, maintenance, NCAA, compliance rules, those kinds of things.

ADRIANNA: Alonzo, how is this program run? Do you do meetings as a group based on sport, almost like a class, or is it done individually based on the student athlete’s needs?

ALONZO JONES: We do that primarily through programming and one on one activities with students based upon where they're at.

ADRIANNA: Aside from focusing on academics, the program also provides services and assistance with life skills for student athletes. Alonzo, what kind of skills do you teach these athletes?

ALONZO JONES: Other subjects will include mental wellness, nutrition, sleep management, inclusion, conversations, and then a lot of career related stuff. So, career readiness, which is a heavy focus for juniors and seniors to help them with life after sport, once their eligibility is complete, and then they transition to the next phase of life. 

ADRIANNA: While NIL overall is handled by a general manager at ASU. The Championship Life program provides students with fiscal education, helping them understand fiscal literacy, taxes, budgeting, 1099 income and so much more. ASU has numerous resources for student athletes if they're in need of assistance, and Championship Life works hand in hand with the professionals in the ASU athletics department.

ALONZO JONES: So, we have four sports psychologists that are a part of fund level athletics. They do mental performance stuff, you know, which is sort of self-talk, visualization, mantras, that kind of stuff. But then obviously they they're trained clinicians, so they can meet one on one with students if they are in major crisis or just want to talk things out. They can do that in one-on-one settings. There might be an instance where maybe they're doing an injury group, and they'll do some group work in that regard. 

ADRIANNA: Alonzo, what kind of student mental health challenges have you seen students at ASU face. And how does Championship Life program deal with these problems differently than the clinicians would?

ALONZO JONES: Yeah, the mental wellness ranges from student anxiety, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, depression, you know, anything that would fall into mental wellness, they can deal with that at an individual level. But then when we do programming, it's more so about coping skills, breathing techniques and those kinds of things.

ADRIANNA: Could you tell me a little bit about how championship life came to be and how it may differ from other programs at ASU and other colleges?

ALONZO JONES: Well, most programs, especially in a well-resourced institution, you know, big four program, which is, you know, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, etc. They, by design, will have a very robust Academic Support Department, and then they'll have a life skill component, or student athlete development area that is responsible for program delivery, but also career readiness. And so, it's, it's consistent with, with well-resourced institutions. You know, there's a counterpart to my position at all the Big, Big 12 schools. And so, they've been around for, for quite some time, initially it was a question was, are athletes graduating? And then you invested resources in the academic side. And then the next understandable question was, okay, well, are they ready for a life after sport? And then that kind of was the justification, or the reasoning for a life skill side of the house. And so, we've been in our current iteration about eight years now, although there was some form of programming probably, you know, decades, eight years.

ADRIANNA: Wow, that's, that's quite a long time. Could you tell me a little bit about what you maybe want to change for the future, or what you are looking to continue to keep the same? 

ALONZO JONES: Well, we're in a transitional point, because, due to a Supreme Court case called Alston, we were able to incentivize student athlete participation in life skills programming for the past four years.

ADRIANNA: Alonzo is referring to the Supreme Court case NCAA vs. Alston. This case was brought to the Supreme Court in 2021 when players sued the NCAA for compensation limits surrounding non-cash, education related benefits, this includes computers, musical instruments and study abroad trips, they claimed that it was a form of price-fixing or the restriction of fair compensation. The players stated that the limits violate Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This section states that it is illegal for companies to enter a contract, combination or conspiracy that unreasonably restrains trade or commerce. Without these limits, players would receive more compensation in exchange for their athletic services.

ALONZO JONES: And so, with the financial incentive, attendance was very robust, marketing was very minor. And you know, we were getting 400 or more student athletes a semester that were attending four or more events. That was, that was a beautiful situation. Now, with the recent House legislation and the revenue sharing model, the monies that were allocated to the incentive now are a part of revenue sharing. And so we no longer have the incentive in the way that we did for the past four years. So, we're back into an older model where you're marketing, you know, great opportunities, but to the same student audience repeatedly and so the attendance numbers have been impacted. And so we had to think strategically now about how do we continue to offer programming in a way that impacts students without the incentive within a new athletic world that has NIL, the transfer portal and revenue sharing. So, we're in transition.

ADRIANNA: You're so right. There have been so many changes to the sports world for college athletes and universities having to adjust with these new rules and NIL and the transfer portal, like you said.

ALONZO JONES: Mhm, yeah, you know, college athletics has been, been in a new era almost every year for the past four years, from NIL, transfer portal, revenue sharing. And so, you know, those of us in the development space are, you know, just trying to figure it out. You know, I think an older model is no longer alien in the modern era. I would love if we could go back to an incentive model. Hopefully that'll reemerge itself in a couple years, or next year, maybe. But in the interim, we have to think about, how do we piggyback on existing things that are well attended, like meals. How do we create other creative incentive strategies to, to get student athletes out? How do we become more laser focused on certain sports or academic levels? And then, how do we do the one-on-one work with our upperclassmen in terms of careers?

ADRIANNA: At the end of the interview, Alonso and I brought up something very important, the transfer portal. With the transfer portal being an available option for student athletes to go from university to university at any point of their collegiate careers, athletes are now choosing to leave one university for another if they're offering and have better nil deals available. It's no secret that popular schools in bigger conferences like the Big 10 or the SEC are generating significant amounts of money from specific sports like basketball and football, because they are bringing in more money. Bigger companies, and some being name brand, are attracted to athletes from these schools and offer big NIL deals in the millions. According to Fox Sports in 2024 former Duke basketball player Cooper Flagg racked up around $28 million in NIL deals thanks to companies like New Balance and Fanatics. The amount of money that can come from an NIL deal can range from below $100 to thousands of dollars, typically, or in more famous athletes, cases like Flagg, even millions.

I'd like to thank Alonzo Jones for joining me today and sharing a little bit about ASU’s programs and resources for their student athletes. On the next episode of Balancing the Brand, I deep dive court cases surrounding NIL and what solutions and problems arose from their rulings. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Adrianna Kilian, signing off but be sure to listen to the next episode of Balancing the Brand. 

REFERENCES:

Alonzo Jones 

alonzoaj@asu.edu

Arizona State University Athletics - Official Athletics website. Sun Devil Athletics | ASU. (n.d.). https://thesundevils.com/staff/alonzo-jones

FOX Sports. (2025, June 2). How much money did Cooper Flagg make in nil during his one year at duke?. FOX Sports. https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-basketball/how-much-money-did-cooper-flagg-make-nil-during-his-one-year-duke

Free sad ominous music download. Tunetank. (n.d.-a). https://tunetank.com/search/sad%20ominous/  

Free medical drama music download. Tunetank. (n.d.-a). https://tunetank.com/search/medical%20drama%20/  

Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). 15 U.S. Code § 1 - trusts, etc., in restraint of trade illegal; penalty. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1