MECHANICSBURG — Sean Clifford got paid here on Saturday.
He used his name, image and likeness to make what I guess was a grand or two, maybe a bit more.
And I helped write the check.
Long a proponent of NIL laws, I wanted to put my money where my mouth was, and at the same time get an up-close and personal view of Article XX-K of PA Senate Bill 381 in action, which says college athletes in Pennsylvania can personally profit from the use of their names, images and likenesses.
So I drove the 83 miles from Centre Hall down Route 322 to the Black N Bleu restaurant on the Carlisle Pike in Mechanicsburg. That’s where Cliff set up shop in a back booth for what was the most visible in-person use of the NIL by a Penn State football player since the PA law was enacted on June 30.
Along with about a hundred Central PA football fans, I paid my $30, stood in line and got an autograph. I paid another five bucks for 8×10 color glossy of the PSU QB, on which he signed his name, #14 and “We Are!” (Sean suggested the silver marker would look best.)
For 90 minutes, the Black N Bleu was Blue N White (TBH, it’s a PSU stop other times too; witness the framed bas-relief Nittany Lion they’re selling for $275).
The check-in table out front had an orange price sheet, titled “SEAN CLIFFORD SIGNING,” with the lead item an autograph ticket for 30 bucks. A full-size helmet cost $144, a jersey $65 and a logo football $29. You could buy any of those items for Clifford to sign, or as many fans did, paying customers could also BYOB — bring your own ball.
Cliff signed them all.
He not only signed balls and helmets and color photos and hats and posters. He also shook hands, posed for pictures, chatted up fans young and old (there were a lot of autograph seekers over 70), threw in some hugs and looked like he was having a genuinely good time.
It seemed like it wasn’t all about the money, and I didn’t hear one person complain about a college athlete making a pocketful of Franklins (Ben, not James).
THE REAL PAY-OFF
Clifford smiled. A lot. Fans wished him luck, said great things about PSU football in general and the quarterback specifically. For sure, it wasn’t the million dollars that Nick Saban intimated that freshman ‘Bama quarterback Bryce Young seems to have in the pipeline.
But for Clifford, maligned as a starter at times – especially after the Nittany Lions’ 0-5 start and his subsequent benching in COVID-19 2020 – there had to be some psychic income as well, even if it had to be collected on a summer Saturday afternoon in a strip mall restaurant wedged beside SPAR Firearms gun shop and next to, not surprisingly, a Sheetz. It wasn’t a big payday, but it was a payoff for some hard work and hard knocks since Clifford first committed to Penn State back on July 13, 2015. It all had a “feel-good for a good guy” quality to it.
Clifford, at 23, is one of the oldest players on the team as he enters the 2021 season as QB1. He certainly has the biggest name recognition of anyone in the program, short of James Franklin himself. Clifford has been a part of the Penn State program longer than any other player or coach, save for Franklin, Brent Pry and Terry Smith. That’s a lot of sweat equity and name recognition.
He’s 14-6 as a starter and if he makes it through the regular season and a bowl unscathed, he would tie Todd Blackledge – another No. 14 from Ohio – for fifth on the all-time start list for Penn State quarterbacks, with 33. He certainly looked fit and ready for summer camp, which begins in a couple of weeks at Penn State. A trip to Indy for the Big Ten championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff would signal that Cliff had an outstanding season, and the payday he got on Saturday will be pocket change for what is then ahead in the NFL.
Saturday’s event had a homey, small-town feel to it. There was a writer and photographer from PennLive, and Penn State beat veteran Pat Principe, the sports anchor from WGAL TV in Lancaster, was also on hand to do a piece on Clifford.
But mostly, the small snaking line of fans for the event, hosted by Black N Bleu owner Donny Brown and organized by Darren Backus, who owns a sports memorabilia company, Best Authentics, in Camp Hill, was decidedly local. The three teens wearing Penn State football T-shirts in line behind me brought mini-helmets — “we bought on Amazon for, like, $20” — and live just two miles from the restaurant.
The event did draw people to Brown’s restaurant – it looked like a few stayed to eat lunch – and got some media attention as well. So, as increasingly said in the sports world, it was a business decision. For Brown, an ardent Penn State fan, it also served another purpose.
“I was glad to do it,” Brown, a fan of the NIL, told me. “They deserve it.”
WIN ONE FOR THE BRAND TEAM
Clifford’s entourage consisted of one person, Trevor Robinson, a recent graduate of Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications, with a degree in advertising. (Clifford, who is a good and very earnest student, has his own degree in advertising, and is now working on another one, in journalism.)
Robinson is a friend of Clifford’s, but also has some chops of his own. He is in the midst of his third internship in marketing and advertising, this time working post-grad for Brownstein Group, a well-regarded branding firm in Philadelphia. NIL, it seems, will be creating a whole new sub-industry of Robinsons, who spent two years working in design and on the business side for the student newspaper, The Daily Collegian. The supporting cottage industry with opportunities for young entrepreneurs and part-time staffers like Robinson is an “unintended consequence,” as Franklin likes to say, of NIL. I like it.
Robinson’s LinkedIn profile lists his current job as creative art director of “The Sean Clifford Brand Team,” for which he handles “creative and marketing for Penn State’s Quarterback” and does website development, merchandising and logo creation.
A challenging schedule, beginning with the season-opener on the road Sept. 4 at Wisconsin, awaits Clifford and Penn State. There will be nothing better for The Clifford Brand Team than a win over the Badgers.
