NIL Edge
Why San Diego State Treats NIL Like Its 18th Sport
Brenden Hill, Assistant AD of Student-Athlete Development & NIL at San Diego State, joins Sterling Randle to discuss how the Aztecs approach NIL, why storytelling has become central to their strategy and how schools can create more opportunities for athletes in a rapidly changing college sports environment.
Presented in partnership with Digital Sport by Hot Paper Lantern ↗
San Diego State has built its NIL strategy around a simple idea: treat NIL with the same level of attention, promotion and infrastructure as one of its varsity sports.
That approach includes dedicated social channels, content, education and promotional support designed to tell athlete stories, create awareness among brands and connect San Diego State student-athletes with opportunities.
In this episode of The NIL Edge, host Sterling Randle sits down with Brenden Hill, Assistant AD of Student-Athlete Development & NIL at San Diego State. A former Virginia Tech football player who later helped build the Triumph NIL collective, Hill explains how his experience with professional athletes and agency-style marketing shaped his approach to NIL, how San Diego State uses storytelling to create opportunities and what schools, brands and athletes need to understand as NIL and revenue sharing continue to evolve.
What This Episode Covers
✓ How Hill's experience with professional athletes shaped his approach to NIL
✓ Why San Diego State approaches NIL like its 18th sport
✓ How dedicated NIL content and storytelling can generate inbound brand opportunities
✓ How San Diego State uses its market, history and athlete brands to create NIL opportunities
✓ What schools can learn from athletes succeeding in NIL outside of football and basketball
✓ Why student-athlete development and NIL education increasingly overlap
✓ What brands still misunderstand about the rapidly changing NIL marketplace
✓ How NIL and revenue sharing could evolve over the next several years
Brenden Hill
Assistant AD of Student-Athlete Development & NIL, San Diego State
Hill brings experience as a former Virginia Tech football student-athlete, working with professional athletes and helping launch Triumph NIL at Virginia Tech before moving inside college athletics at San Diego State. His background across athlete marketing, personal branding, NIL and student-athlete development shapes an approach that combines athlete education with the creation of real-world marketing opportunities.
As NIL has evolved from third-party athlete marketing into a much larger ecosystem that now includes revenue sharing, schools are being forced to think differently about how NIL fits within the athletic department.
San Diego State's approach shows how schools can use storytelling, athlete development and institutional resources to create NIL opportunities without limiting the strategy to football and basketball. By building dedicated channels around NIL, the department can educate its audience while giving brands another way to discover and understand its student-athletes.
Hill also looks ahead at the larger challenge facing college sports: creating stronger alignment between NIL, marketing, licensing, communications, corporate partnerships, fundraising and student-athlete development while navigating the financial pressures created by revenue sharing. For San Diego State, the long-term opportunity is building an integrated model that can support athletes while preserving the developmental and educational elements of college sports.
The NIL Edge
The NIL Edge is NILNewsstand's interview series featuring the athletes, brands and college athletics leaders shaping the future of NIL, revenue sharing and the new era of college athletics.
The series is hosted by Sterling Randle and produced by Digital Sport by Hot Paper Lantern in partnership with NILNewsstand.
