Endorsement deals come thick and fast for college athletes, as NCAA floodgates open
CBSN
Boost Mobile and Fresno State women's basketball twins Haley and Hanna Cavinder. Smoothie King and Louisiana State University and quarterback Myles Brennan. 1-800-Got-Junk and Kansas University hoops star Mitch Lightfoot.
Companies large and small have wasted no time finding college athletes for sponsorship deals, just weeks after the NCAA granted them the OK to do so. While the financial details on some of these deals have been kept secret, what's clear is that student-athletes signings are happening faster than you can say "Division I." Sports experts say this is only the beginning. "The speed at which companies went after these athletes was shocking," Tim Derdenger, a sports marketing and branding expert and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told CBS MoneyWatch. "I mean, I knew it was going to happen eventually, but we're only three weeks in."Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.