⛓️‍💥 NIL Is Broken, Here’s How a 22-Year-Old Is Fixing It

Happy Wednesday,

It’s never been easier for brands to pay athletes, but it’s also never been harder to get value from it.

Since NIL passed in 2021, thousands of companies have inked deals with college athletes. But most are still missing the mark; spending big on followers instead of influence, ignoring cultural nuance, and treating athletes like creators instead of community conduits.

That disconnect is exactly what Jordan Green is trying to solve.

As a former meme-page owner turned social strategist, Jordan launched Glacier to help brands build credibility with Gen Z through real-world experiences, not just posts. His pitch? Relationships > reach. And when done right, you don’t need massive follower counts to make a massive impact.

This week, Jake and I sat down with Jordan to talk about how he built a college marketing agency from a dorm room, what brands get wrong about NIL, and why the best campus activations don’t start on Instagram; they start with trust.

🎧 [Listen to our full episode with Jordan Green]

5 Takeaways From Our Conversation With Jordan Green

1. Jordan started with fidget spinners and meme pages.

Long before NIL, Jordan was flipping fidget spinners out of his seventh-grade locker, buying them in bulk for $3 and selling them for $15. By high school, he was running meme accounts on Instagram, eventually growing them to over 10M followers.

But when sponsorships started rolling in, he realized attention was a real business. “That was the lightbulb,” he told us. “If I could drive this kind of engagement for myself, imagine what I could do for brands.”

That mindset eventually became the foundation of Glacier.

2. NIL changed the rules, but most brands still don’t get it.

The floodgates opened in 2021, but that didn’t mean every athlete became a creator.

Jordan told us most brands look for the wrong signals:

• Follower counts

• Viral moments

• “The biggest name on the basketball team”

But influence is contextual. “Sometimes the pole vaulter with 2,000 followers can move more product than the starting point guard,” he explained.

The key isn’t scale. It’s cultural relevance.

3. The best brand activations are experiential, not transactional.

Instead of overpaying athletes for dry deliverables, Jordan focuses on what Gen Z actually values: access, experiences, and community.

When working with Fox Sports’ Big Noon Kickoff, Glacier brought athletes backstage, let them interact with hosts, and made the entire activation something worth talking about. “We produced 30M views without paying a single athlete,” he said. “They wanted to be there.”

The goal is to make the brand feel like a fan, not a sponsor.

4. Scaling trust is hard, but not impossible.

Jordan is Glacier’s only full-time employee, but the operation has expanded to dozens of campuses through networks of contractors and student collaborators. His calendar is a CRM, and he keeps 5,000+ contacts tagged by region, sport, and project type.

That hands-on approach won’t scale forever, but it’s intentional. “I don’t want to replicate campus efforts 50 times. I want to go deep in 5 places that matter,” he told us.

In a sea of lazy national campaigns, Glacier’s edge is attention to detail.

5. The goal isn’t just brand deals, it’s long-term leverage.

Jordan isn’t trying to build a 100-person agency. He wants to use Glacier as a platform, one that funds his lifestyle, builds his network, and lets him take equity bets in the brands he believes in.

And while he’s graduating from his “young guy in the room” status, he knows the value still travels with him. “If Glacier goes away tomorrow,” he said, “I still have the relationships.”

That mindset (treating the business like a launchpad, not his legacy) might be the smartest play of all.

Why It Matters

The NIL market is flooded with money, but short on meaning. Brands are chasing reach, athletes are chasing cash, and very few partnerships are built to last.

Jordan’s approach is a reminder that influence is earned, not bought. And if brands want Gen Z’s attention, they have to stop shouting from the sidelines and start showing up on campus in ways that actually matter.

Because the next generation of sports marketing won’t be driven by metrics. It’ll be driven by trust.

🎧 [Listen to our full episode with Jordan Green]

📩 And don’t forget: Bottom of the Ninth is back this Friday with the top three stories in sports and business from the week.

See you then,
Tyler & Jake