Former Illinois athletics employee and athlete Kathleen Knight is leading what she desires to be the high-dollar non-profit Name, Image and Likeness Collective for Illini athletes.
By Matt Stevens - IlliniGuys Football Writer/Analyst
March 2, 2023
(Cover photo courtesy University of Illinois)
In a relatively short amount of time, Kathleen Knight has gone from a University of Illinois athletics employee with extreme hesitation over embracing name, image and likeness for college athletes to now being the CEO and president of what many hope is the high-dollar collective option.
“At a certain point, that doesn’t really matter anymore because it’s here and it’s not going away so we all need to just get over that fear. I will say I personally got over it when I was able to part of, with the leadership of (Illinois athletics director) Josh Whitman, really needed to be thoughtful in our philosophy about what NIL success looked like at the University of Illinois,” Knight said. “The fact of the matter is (NIL) continues to be a lever that allows us the greatest opportunity to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. It started to become too important to me to not do everything possible, not to drop everything to figure out a way for Illinois to have success on the NIL front.”