Behind the scenes of an NIL deal: How Marquette's Tyler Kolek came to assist TKO Miller

Tim Oleszczuk and his colleagues at Milwaukee investment firm TKO Miller were sitting around in late February trying to figure out how to get the deal done.

Fellow managing director Tammie Miller had been watching a Marquette men's basketball game a few days earlier when the inspiration came to her like a crisp bounce pass. Golden Eagles point guard Tyler Kolek was racking up assists and the public address announcer at Fiserv Forum, Mike Jakubowski, punctuated each one with a phrase that has become commonplace over Kolek's two seasons at MU: "From T-K-O!"

“Tammie goes ‘We got to hire that guy. We got to have him do some commercials,’ " Oleszczuk recalled. "And so the next day, she’s like ‘We got to hire that guy. We got to figure this NIL thing out.’ We looked at each other and were, like, OK, what do we do? We had no idea.”

Everybody in college athletics has been trying to figure out the landscape since July 2021 when the NCAA started allowing athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. There will probably be more rules and regulations in the future, but local deals like the one between TKO Miller and Kolek are here to stay. They provide a window in how these agreements come together and the ways everyone involved can benefit.

"I think the best deals are the deals within the community," Kolek said. "Because other people take notice and go to that place, and it just kind of brings business to them and brings notoriety to me that I wouldn’t have in any other case."

How TKO Miller connected with TKO Kolek

TKO Miller has a few employees who are MU graduates, so they started asking around about who to contact about an NIL deal. They landed on Danielle Josetti, the school's executive associate athletic director for compliance, marketing and sales.

Per NCAA rules, schools can't solicit NIL deals but can tell interested parties about who is available and gauge the interest of individuals. MU has its own restrictions for deals if companies don't align with the school's ideals, such as tobacco companies, though student-athletes can have alcohol-related endorsements if they are 21 years old. No issues have cropped up yet.

“The only controversy I saw in one was I felt like they were taking advantage of a student," Josetti said. "So trying to get my opinion across without violating what I’m allowed to do as a university employee was tricky. And ultimately he did not end up signing that deal.

There weren't an overwhelming number of people calling Josetti in the fall and early winter, but business interest picked up in February as the Golden Eagles established themselves as a top 10 team.

When TKO Miller office manager Katie Yde left a message, Josetti knew it was the perfect NIL deal.

"When I called her back, she brought up Tyler," Josetti said. "I said I think that would be great. He'll be great."

Making the deal happen

Oleszczuk got Kolek's phone number from Josetti. The deal came together quickly.

“I started out with ‘Hey Tyler, your old coach was my boyhood friend because I grew up with (Wausau native) Dave Paulsen, who coached him at (George) Mason,’ " Oleszczuk said. "And so it broke the ice a little bit and we said, hey, do you want to do this and he said ‘Yeah, it sounds fun.’ ”

Then there was the matter of money. Nobody quite knows what the market is for NIL deals because it's so new and also it's hard to tell if numbers you see floating around on social media are accurate.

"We said ‘We’ll give you $5,000,’ " Oleszczuk said. "We had done zero research. We didn’t know if that’s a lot. We didn’t know if that’s a little. And he goes ‘OK. But we’re leaving for the Big East tournament, it’s coming up so I got tomorrow and Sunday.’ ”

More: His dad was Little East player of the year in 1987. Marquette's Tyler Kolek could earn the same honor in the Big East this season.

More: Marquette's Tyler Kolek knows he shot poorly last year. Here's what he's doing to change.

More: Tyler Kolek has a chance to pass Tony Miller's assists records at Marquette. What does the former star point guard think of that?

Student-athletes must report every deal to their schools. Oleszczuk, a former practicing lawyer, drew up a simple agreement.

"They don’t have Wisconsin state law dictating anything," Josetti said of MU athletes. "They have to report the deal. If it’s a company we don’t know enough about and we need to check to make sure it falls under our policy, we can get more details. They don’t actually have to provide the contract for us. They just have to report the deal and how much they got paid and what they did to get paid and the date that they did it.

"We don’t even say that has to be done before the deal is done. It’s pretty student-athlete friendly. We know if you’re on the spot and someone at Subway is saying ‘We want to give you a free sub, you just have to take a picture.’ Go ahead and do it, but report it.”

Inspiration from "This Is SportsCenter" commercials

TKO Miller does its own commercials, so Oleszczuk and Co. started brainstorming ideas. An employee suggested doing something like the ‘This Is SportsCenter’ commercials where athletes were shown doing mundane tasks around the ESPN offices.

“We spent that day watching all the SportsCenter commercials to come up with ideas," Oleszczuk said. "In the meantime, we’re running down to Burghardt’s to get shooting shirts and jerseys with Tyler’s number and ‘TKO Miller’ on the front. To have something to wear because we knew he couldn’t wear Marquette stuff."

To use MU branding, TKO Miller would have needed a licensing deal with the school. The company is thinking about doing that for future deals.

Kolek, who has taken some acting classes at MU, knocked out his three commercials in just over a hour. He tosses water bottles behind his back and shoots paper in wastebaskets. TKO Miller's Yde shot and edited the videos on her phone.

"I’m open for everything," Kolek said. "I love doing those little stuff like that. That stuff is fun to me. Meeting new people, interacting, just getting my name out there with a different crowd.

"People come up to me and are like ‘Oh, I’ve seen your commercials.’ Those corny commercials, they mean something to people and they mean something to me. It’s just fun for everybody.”

It was just what Oleszczuk was looking for in the deal.

"Great to work with," he said. "Real coachable as you’d expect. We were just going to put them on social media and then my buddy Shane Blackman over at ESPN (Milwaukee) said that during the (NCAA) Tournament these would be great to run on the eight-county area and on the ESPN app. We did that as well and just great exposure and we’ve gotten a tremendous amount of mileage and exposure for TKO.”

The future of NIL deals for MU athletes

Kolek is one of the best players in college basketball, the Big East player of the year and an All-American. He's also pretty savvy when it comes to NIL deals.

"Not many guys still realize how much money there is to be had out there," Kolek said. "And I don't think people are taking full advantage. Even myself, I'm not taking full advantage and I'm asking questions. I'm trying to figure it out."

He's done small deals like getting $500 to show up at a local restaurant and take pictures. He's done more ambitious ventures like a clothing line where you can buy shirts that feature a profane, off-hand remark he made before last season.

It can be a lot to balance business dealings with the demands of being an elite college athlete. So after discussing things with MU head coach Shaka Smart and his family, Kolek decided last week to sign with an NIL agent from Priority Sports, which is allowed by the NCAA.

"It’s kind of off my plate and I don’t have to be the one thinking about it," Kolek said. "They can just come to me with whatever they get or whatever they think works for me.”

Kolek cited a recent deal as to why having an agent would help an athlete.

"Nobody really knows what the market is," Kolek said. "That’s why you hire the agents. The trading card deal, say for example, they’re giving me $2 per signature and I got 5,000 signatures to do, per se, I wouldn’t know if that’s good or not. But my agents have done 25 other trading card deals, so they would know."

Most high-major college athletes make money through collectives, and Kolek also works with the Be The Difference NIL group that sets up MU athletes with community groups.

Since athletes can also get deals on their own − and Josetti already had enough work with her usual duties − MU hired former Golden Eagles women's soccer player Madison Dunker in late March as a general manager of its NIL program run through Altius Sports Partners.

"She’s got a network of her peers through Altius that she can do best practices with," Josetti said. "So she meets and works with us, but once a week she’s meeting with the Madis on other campuses to learn what’s working well.

"She’s able to educate, which is a big word. She’s not able to solicit deals for athletes, however, she can educate the community on NIL and NIL deals and then sort of be a middleman there."

Dunker has brought in professionals to give presentations on topics like marketing and taxes. NIL deals are their own education.

“Especially if you’re making money, you want to be smart with your money," Kolek said. "You want to learn about saving. You learn about investing. For me, I’m learning about that stuff but I’m also outsourcing out to other people.

"My dad ... whoever did their taxes did my taxes. Whoever their financial advisor is, is now going to be my financial advisor. It kind of helps to have other people around you who know what they’re doing.”

Oleszczuk considers the $5,000 that TKO Miller paid Kolek a good investment. He hopes to do more commercials with other college athletes or maybe Kolek again.

"I hope if we ask him back that he doesn’t hold out for more money," Oleszczuk joked. "Maybe he’ll remember where he got his start.”

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marquette point guard Tyler Kolek is making money with NIL deals