What Iowa’s Swarm Collective does to prevent situations like UNLV’s NIL dispute

IOWA CITY — As the volunteer founder/CEO of Iowa’s Swarm Collective, Brad Heinrichs has heard of broken promises elsewhere when it comes to name, image and likeness payments.

“One of our players in our Swarm player panel when we had an event this fall mentioned that one of his friends on another team, another Division I team, was promised a certain amount,” Heinrichs said. “And when he got to school, that amount was quite a bit less than what he was promised. And at that point, he’s stuck.”

That experience (and other experiences) left Heinrichs “not at all” surprised when national headlines emerged about an NIL dispute at UNLV involving its starting quarterback.

Matthew Sluka announced plans to sit out the rest of the season over an NIL dispute. His agent told the Associated Press the dispute is over a $100,000 name, image and likeness payment that UNLV promised but did not pay.

UNLV, in a statement, said Sluka’s representative “made financial demands upon the university and its NIL collective in order to continue playing” and interpreted them as a “violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law.”

“UNLV does not engage in such activity, nor does it respond to implied threats,” UNLV Athletics said in the statement.

Heinrichs, an actuary by trade, has confidence the whole ordeal at UNLV is less likely to happen with Iowa given the Swarm Collective’s safeguards.

The confidence largely stems from the Swarm’s clear-cut contracts with athletes.

“Some of these collectives don’t even sign contracts; they just promise, ‘Hey, we’ll pay you X dollars,’” Heinrichs said. “Our contracts are very specific, and they’re time-limited. So we provide a certain amount by a certain time, and you have to do a certain thing in order to get paid.”

Swarm signs athletes to annual contracts rather than month-to-month deals. Swarm has NIL lawyers who help with drafting the contracts, and Heinrichs said most athletes have NIL agents as well.

“These are legit contracts,” Heinrichs said. “These aren’t handshake deals.”

The contracts theoretically bring legal liability to the collective if it attempted to pay less than what it agreed to pay the athlete when entering the agreement. Heinrichs said the contracts are signed “very shortly after they arrive on campus.”

“If for whatever reason, we decided to not uphold our end of the contract, then the student-athlete could rightfully sue us, and the Swarm would have to pay,” Heinrichs said. “And if the Swarm couldn’t pay, then I would be personally (be) paying for it.”

That being said, there are some clauses that would terminate the contract — “if they break the law, get kicked off the team” or “acts of moral turpitude,” Heinrichs said. Swarm also is off the hook if the athlete transfers to another school.

“The last thing I want is for somebody to transfer to the University of Alabama, and I’m still having to pay that person,” Heinrichs said. “That would be a death wish for the collective.”

Iowa and the Swarm Collective have other possible advantages, including “constant, consistent and effective communication” between the collective and coaching staffs. Swarm also is the only collective focused on supporting Hawkeye athletes.

“Imagine if you’ve got a place where there’s three or four different collectives that are supporting the program, and then you got a lot of cooks in the kitchen,” Heinrichs said.

Even with Iowa’s precautions, a contract still does not necessarily stop an athlete — whether they’re at Iowa, UNLV or anywhere in between — from threatening to redshirt and/or transfer unless they receive more compensation.

For now, though, it has been enough to shelter Iowa from problems perhaps plaguing other programs.

“We’ve never had any real issues with our agreements,” Heinrichs said. “We’re not trying to pull one over on our student-athletes. We’re trying to help them.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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