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TJ Berger is a 6-foot-4 guard from Pennsylvania who averaged 3.1 points per game on a 15-16 USD team in 2021-22.
His great legacy, though, may be at the Division I school just down Interstate 8, for planting the thought seeds of the Players Era Festival that could keep San Diego State basketball relevant by paying its NIL collective $1 million annually over at least the next three years.
To understand how and why, you have to go back two summers to The Peninsula on the Indian River Bay, a golf and tennis resort in Millsboro, Del., where the Berger family was vacationing.
TJ, who has since transferred to Lafayette College, received an unsolicited Instagram message from an NIL agent with an offer to represent him. He showed his father, Seth, the founder of apparel company And1 Basketball with deep ties in the sport.
Seth’s response: “No way, TJ. That’s not real NIL money.”
It got him thinking as the landscape of college basketball rapidly shifted under everyone’s sneakers. Why not change the NIL compensation model with events that provide money directly to athletes, and why not do it in November?
Berger called Ian Orefice, who previously was the president of Time, Inc., and had created his own company called EverWonder Studio.
“I’ve known Ian since I was 14,” Berger said. “He would tell me if it’s a bad idea or a good idea. He said, ‘Wow, there’s the kernel of a really good idea here. We can create a bunch of compelling events around kids, but everything we do involves NIL compensation.’”
They called Jeff Zucker, the former president of NBC Universal who now is CEO of deep-pocketed investment firm RedBird IMI. They started meeting with NCAA officials last September and by the end of the year had the outline of a nonconference basketball event with SDSU and seven other programs — five ranked in The Associated Press Top 25 — that opens Tuesday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
It works like this. Each of the eight participating teams have $1 million sent to their associated NIL collectives, which in turn distribute the money to the players outside official athletic department channels. You play two predetermined games Tuesday and Wednesday, then a crossover game Saturday against the event’s opposite quadrant.
There are additional payouts based on performance: $500,000 for first place, $250,000 for second, $150,000 for third and $100,000 for fourth.
The NCAA allows teams to play in one nonconference MTE, or multiteam event, per season. In the past, they have been made-for-TV events in November and December that, except for the Maui Invitational, played in a 2,400-seat gymnasium, routinely draw modest crowds and struggle for financial viability.
So how can the Players Era Festival possibly turn a profit with a $9 million purse?
Berger insists they’ll be “break-even out of the gate” but also notes that isn’t the point. It’s what happens next year, when they double in size. Or the year after that. Or the year after that.
“I don’t know other operator’s models, but it doesn’t really matter to me,” said Berger, who after selling And1 became the head coach at Westtown School in suburban Philadelphia. “We don’t really see this as trying to make a profit in November 2024. We’re first and foremost trying to have an impact. My belief is any profit any business has is a direct result of how much impact it has.
“Big picture, March Madness is the greatest sporting event in the history of the universe. Then you have conference play and conference tournaments, which is awesome. The rivalries in those conferences are real. But in November, there’s an opportunity to effectively have the first leg of college basketball’s triple crown.”
Berger didn’t offer details about what it might look like, but the possibilities are enticing in a city like Las Vegas, with a half-dozen arenas, a major airport and tens of thousands of available hotel rooms over Thanksgiving week.
The imagination wanders. Why not re-play the previous spring’s Sweet 16 in November for seven-figure payouts?
The 2024 event has been cobbled together in less than a year, and there have been associated growing pains. Barely a month before the first game, the format was altered to make it an eight-team event instead of separate four-team events after the NCAA relaxed its MTE rules.
Programs with future commitments to Maui and other MTEs, according to sources, have not yet canceled them to play in the Players Era Festival, waiting to see how the inaugural event fares (and whether the $1 million indeed lands in the bank accounts of collectives).
There also could be questions about the source of the money. Players Era’s parent company is EverWonder Studio, which is primarily funded by New York-based RedBird IMI, which is an investment arm of the United Arab Emirates.
Could this be the college basketball version of LIV Golf and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund?
“I think that’s actually a leap,” Berger said. “Our investor is EverWonder Studio, a U.S.-based company. … Any financing company willing to support student-athletes in the United States, we should be welcoming. College athletes getting paid is clearly on the side of right.”
The Aztecs will practice at 7 a.m. Monday before flying to Las Vegas, where they will spend the day with a sponsor meet and greet, media content creation, an appearance at a golf tournament, a pre-tournament banquet and other NIL-related obligations.
“Listen, for what they’re paying our NIL collective to come,” coach Brian Dutcher said, “I’m willing to do all those things and know that in the long run, not only are these good games, but they will benefit our program from an NIL standpoint. I don’t mind doing anything they ask us to. … It’s vitally important for us.”
Or as Houston coach Kelvin Sampson told Sportico in September: “Updates in August are never a good thing. The hay should have been in the barn with a lock on the door. You don’t work on your MTE schedule in the middle of August. But this deal, for NIL purposes, for being able to go through an avenue that doesn’t require donor participation, where you don’t have to tax your fan base, we have to do things like this.”
It’s a new experience for players, especially those who entered college basketball for an academic scholarship without the prospect of making money.
“I never expected college basketball to almost feel professional, but that’s what is does feel like,” SDSU senior forward Jared-Coleman Jones said. “It feels professional. It’s a completely different feel than when I first came to college. I was a college student, and I thought about parties and playing basketball. That’s all I thought about. It’s really different.”
Added Miles Byrd: “It’s a business trip. You’re coming out of there with some money.”
SDSU was one of the first calls by Berger and partner Steve Rosenberry, both for the basketball pedigree and for the basketball knowledge of Matt Soria, the program’s longtime director of operations who provided organizational guidance behind the scenes. Houston, Rutgers and Alabama were the other early commitments.
Notre Dame, Creighton, Oregon and Texas A&M were next. Notre Dame was scheduled to play in the Rady Children’s Invitational at UC San Diego’s LionTree Arena this week, instead triggering a $200,000 buyout clause to jump to the Players Era Festival.
The event’s website says it has commitments for 2025 from Gonzaga, Michigan, Baylor, Iowa State, Syracuse, St. John’s and St. Joseph’s.
“We can make next year as big as we want with the interest we have from top 25, top 50 programs who want to be in Players Era,” Berger said. “I think the door is wide open for us to build the first leg of college basketball’s triple crown, whether that is in November 2025 or November 2026 – sometime very soon.
“Had we not been able to execute this by November 2024, then someone else would have taken the lead in athlete compensation in college basketball and we would have been left behind.”
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