Norfolk State University football player Rayquan Smith is known as the NIL king.
The Virginia native took matters into his own hands by pitching to several brands for NIL contracts. At the time, the young player was waiting to hear back from a hiring manager from a nearby Planet Fitness. Seeing his peers secure NIL bags made him return to the drawing board. Developing a pitch, he pitched to work for free for several companies. Only three companies responded after the first round of emails.
Rather than be deterred by the small number of responses, Smith continued expanding his list of company pitches. He secured 86 major NIL deals, Business Insider reported.
Darren Heitner, a sports lawyer who represented the Cavinder Twins, confirmed Smith’s amount of deals is the most he’s ever seen.
“I was hitting up every company I could, just asking, ‘Can I do this? Can I help promote your product?'” he told On3. “This, this and that. And I had a few people reply back.”
@rayquansmith23 New NIL DEAL #85 I’m The King of NIL 👑 #rayquansmith #fyp #kingofnil #vsu #nil #dmv ♬ Solo (Sped Up Version – We gon’ put it on the hood, ayy, before we put it on God) – Future
Smith’s first deals were with Smart Cups and Eastbay in 2021, which led him to become the first HBCU athlete to partner with Eastbay.
“I guess other companies saw what I was doing, so they came on board, and I got an agent that week. Then, once I got an agent, I got one of my biggest deals, and that was Eastbay. Yep. So after that, it was just up from there,” Smith said.
Continuing to build his NIL empire, he signed agent Freddie Berry as his NIL representative.
“There aren’t many athletes that create content the way that he does,” Berry said. “I’ve worked with Power Five starters, best player on their team arguably, and they’re nowhere near as good when it comes to the NIL aspect. Their photos are just on their Instagram page or just them in their helmet. They’re not willing to kind of step outside of that realm and dabble into the actual marketing side of NIL like him.”
His latest deals include Spikeball, Body Armour, G.O.A.T. Fuel, Arby’s, Champs Sports and the Norfolk Admirals hockey team. As the show’s first guest, he was even on Kevin Garnett’s Showtime’s KG Certified: Young Lions in January.
This year, he was awarded the HBCU Male Athlete of the Year by the HBCU Xperience. He will attend the NIL Summit, nominated for male athlete of the year next to UCLA’s Chase Griffin, Alabama’s Bryce Young, Minnesota’s Gable Steveson, LSU’s Shareef O’Neal and Jackson State’s Shedeur Sanders.
