Brownell says NIL dollars, fan support, and facilities have helped fuel Clemson's rise

Joseph Girard III's transfer in boosted Clemson's Elite Eight run and likely provided a path for future impact transfers.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Thu May 09 12:15:02 GMT-04:00 2024

CLEMSON – Clemson head basketball coach Brad Brownell says if programs are going to be successful in this new era of college athletics, NIL has to play a major role.

Brownell took his team to the Elite Eight this past season, and a big part of that run were transfers like Joe Girard and Jack Clark. Both players have moved on, but Brownell has already added transfers Jaeden Zackery and Victor Lakhin, and Brownell is looking to add more (preferably a big man).

That means NIL dollars, and Brownell said there is a misconception out there that Clemson isn’t in the NIL game. Clemson is and is successful. But there are other pieces of the puzzle.

“Yeah, I think in our sport, if you're not involved in that and you're not fundraising - I'm doing a ton of fundraising and have been for 14 years – and one of the reasons why we were in the Elite Eight is because of all the fundraising, fundraising, whatever you want to call it for 14 years,” Brownell said. “It's one of the reasons why we have a facility that's much nicer than it was. It's filling those premium seats. It doesn't just happen with NIL. It happens with improving your facilities. It happens with donor retention.

“It happens with getting folks to buy into your program enough that when this was new, that our people were involved and engaged to be able to support the guys on our team to be able to be ready for this opportunity. When it did show up, we were there to meet it. And I do deserve a lot of credit for that a lot because it's been a 14-year journey, and had we had a different coach or a newer young coach at the time, it wouldn't have happened. There'd been no chance. So that's obviously been a spot of mind, a little bit of a sore spot at times because I think that that's gone not as noticed as I would like. And obviously it's vital. I mean, in college basketball right now, NIL is a major factor in it.”

Brownell said he can’t get into specifics of NIL dollars.

“There are rules that are involved with the collective and those kinds of things, but it's very involved, and it's a tool that folks have to have to be successful. It's certainly something that folks are using to make decisions,” he said.

He went on to say that just because head football coach Dabo Swinney doesn’t talk publicly about NIL funds -- that doesn't mean Clemson isn’t a major player.

“I think there's a mistake here because maybe football doesn't come out this way with Coach Swinney. There's some things going on with football that guys are getting NIL,” Brownell said. “The basketball thing that I can tell you is that any program at this level has got to have an NIL package for their players, or you can't be successful. So, it's not just specific for Clemson. We're doing our part to try to do the best we can to make sure that our players are treated as well as they can. And there are also obviously limits in all of it. It is not hard to figure out some of the schools that are spending the most as you can easily see. And I mean, it's just not hard to figure that out if you study the sport.”

Clemson invested in new basketball facilities, which has also contributed to the Tigers’ success, but Brownell said people don’t understand the school's support for basketball.

“I've said you have to have a complete program. You have to have tremendous support from everybody to be good consistently. You can have a good team, but it's hard to be consistently good unless you have support all the way down and your university is committed to their product and their players and their staff, and I think it's no surprise that our success has improved tremendously when we got in this facility,” Brownell said. “I mean, there's a hundred percent change in people's attitudes when they visited campus on the commitment Clemson was making to basketball, and so now you bring kids through this building, and they're impressed. I've said this before that usually when I ask kids who visit, and I ask, ‘Well, what'd you think?’ The answer's always 'Better than I expected,' which is great to hear, but it's also like, well, what was your expectation? Right? I mean, why would you not expect it to be good?

“Again, it's that (Clemson is a) football (school) mentality that everybody has and schools use against us that unless you come over here and actually see it, you don't know what it is, but it's really good, and we have really good facilities, and we have good support, and we have a good fan base. We have a fan base that cares, and when you do dig into it, and people listen with an open mind and get to see things, then it's changed our recruiting, we've gotten better players, and obviously, when you get better players you have a better chance to win, and so there's no question that that's helped us tremendously, but you have to stay with it to try to be good consistently.”