Stream It Or Skip It?

For more than a century, college athletes couldn’t make a dime off their exploits — at least not above the table. That changed overnight in 2021, and “NIL”–the new rules allowing athletes to profit off their own name, image and likeness — opened up a massive new marketplace for college sports’ best. The Money Game, a new six-episode documentary miniseries on Prime Video, follows six student-athletes at LSU as they navigate this new world.

Opening Shot: A shot of Louisiana State University’s campus, then a montage of athletes pursuing branding opportunities. Text appears on the screen: “For decades, college athletics has been a billion-dollar industry. And for more than a century, the student athletes driving the industry were prohibited from receiving any compensation. On July 1, 2021, a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court upended that system. For the first time, student athletes were allowed to profit from their name, image and likeness. College sports would never be the same.”

The Gist: The series follows a set of prominent student-athletes at LSU, including some of the biggest earners in the college sports world like Olivia “Livvy” Dunne, Jayden Daniels and Angel Reese along with others including Flau’jae Johnson, Alia Armstrong, and Trace Young. Their stories are fleshed out with commentary from school officials and experts within the business of college sports.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This is, in my mind, simply the long-overdue followup to Blue Chips, the underrated 1994 movie starring Nick Nolte and former LSU athlete Shaquille O’Neal.

Our Take: “It’s the Wild West,” a half-dozen different voices express throughout the first episode of The Money Game. They’re expressing a sentiment widely held by many across college sports–the sense that the 2021 Supreme Court decision that permitted student-athletes to profit off their own name, image and likeness (NIL) for the first time has created nothing but chaos. Athletes once banned from accepting a free tattoo or even a free cheeseburger were suddenly freed to sign six-figure endorsement deals, or wooed to leave one school for another by quickly-established NIL collectives.

There’s no denying that it’s been a sea change, but this (usually negative) “Wild West” sentiment expressed by some fans, commentators and coaches is counterbalanced quite simply by Heisman Trophy-winning LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels. “Man, they trippin’. There’s people that come from nothing, so they gotta take care of their people back home.”

“You don’t have to play the money game. But if you want to capitalize during your time as a student-athlete, you can do that,” LSU Associate AD Taylor Jacobs says, stating a clear-headed stance on the new marketplace in college athletics. Over its six-episode run, The Money Game looks to show not just the dominant media perspective on this new world, but also the perspective of the student-athletes showing us the world of NIL through a half-dozen of LSU’s top Tigers.

There’s the big names, like gymnast Livvy Dunne, who amassed a huge following on social media during 2020’s COVID lockdowns, and was able to immediately capitalize on her influencer status when the law changed. Future Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels was able to recreate a thrilling game-winning play against Alabama in a commercial for personal-injury attorney Gordon McKernan, a deal that earned Daniels a reported $50,000 over just two months.

“I never imagined it would go as fast as it has,” McKernan laughs, seemingly quite happy with the marketing investment he made.

There’s also athletes who aren’t quite household names, though, like track and field athlete Alia Armstrong. These are–to me–the most compelling stories of the new landscape, and the most compelling part of The Money Game. A top football star like Daniels–while previously barred from making money in college–at least had the promise of NFL money to (hopefully) look forward to. For athletes in Olympic sports, their earning window is often now or never, and even smaller NIL deals can be game-changers. That is, if they can get them.

As AD Jacobs notes, “when everyone started talking about NIL three years ago, everyone automatically went to that 1% of top earners, and ‘student-athletes will sign national campaigns, this is what it’ll be, and that’s it.’ The reality is, 98, 99% of our student-athlete population doesn’t have that same platform, therefore getting NIL deals is a little bit more difficult. Alia Armstrong is a great example… Alia is like, a top-four track student-athletes in the world… she came and sat down with my staff and basically said ‘I need help getting NIL deals.’”

“Mentally, it’s been super hard, I won’t lie,” Armstrong confesses. “I feel like track and school is already one job, so adding on another job is crazy, I don’t know what to do with that.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing more salacious than some of Dunne’s bikini-clad TikToks.

Parting Shot: The Tigers battle against Alabama in one of college football’s most heated rivalries, and the game ends up in Jayden Daniels’ hands. He drops back to pass, and is laid out by the Tide’s Dallas Turner. The episode ends with him lying on the turf, his status and future unclear.

(Spoiler: Daniels sustained a concussion and the Tigers lost, but he returned the next week to set an SEC record with 606 total yards, won the Heisman at the end of the season, and was selected by Washington #2 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft. He signed a $37.75M, fully-guaranteed contract with the Commanders and started in Week 1. I just don’t want you to worry.)

Sleeper Star: There’s a lot of star power here, between athletes like Dunne, Reese and Daniels, but the core of the show is LSU Associate AD Taylor Jacobs, one the driving forces behind the school’s NIL efforts. As she recalls, “when we started having conversations about NIL prior to the laws passing in 2021, a lot of people were like ‘no, we don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole’… and I was like, ‘I will!’”

Most Pilot-y Line: “July 1, 2021, the NIL rule changed, and that’s the day my life changed,” gymnast and social-media power influencer Livvy Dunne recollects–and she’s understating it, if anything. “My first offer was a six-figure offer!”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Given its subject matter and its focus, The Money Game could’ve been dry, or limited in interest to only LSU fans. Instead, it’s a sharp and balanced look at how dramatically NIL has changed the world of college athletics.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.