The era of Name, Image, Likeness is here and has greatly altered the landscape of college sports. But as some programs are experiencing a wave of benefits from NIL, other schools are still trying to figure out how to maximize the impact of NIL.

Unfortunately, Iowa’s Swarm Collective has struggled to get lots of support directly from Iowa athletics. According to Pat Harty with HawkFanatic.com, Swarm CEO Brad Heinrichs has been frustrated by his efforts to get information from the Hawkeye athletic department in order to assist with NIL endeavors.

While Iowa cannot officially help the NIL financially, Heinrichs details other ways the administration can help but has not done so yet. Some of the help Heinrichs is hoping for includes information on Iowa’s season ticket holders.

According to Harty’s story, Heinrichs says Iowa has refused to extend such help until the SWARM Collective agrees to meet Title IX requirements with their NIL payouts. Heinrichs says the collective is not bound by Title IX, and such compliance is not commonplace around the country.

“SWARM refuses to raise money to spread payments equally across all sports to comply with Title IX,” Heinrichs said per Harty. “We are not subject to Title IX. We are not affiliated with the university.

“With that said, the University does not have to support us in any way. They cannot provide us financial assistance. But we have asked them to help in other ways.”

Heinrichs went on to say such frustrations and lack of help from the athletic department are “some headwinds that other NIL collectives… are not dealing with.” He also believes such collaboration between the athletic department and the collective is necessary for both entities to thrive in the new age of college athletics.

We’ll see how NIL takes shape at Iowa moving forward.