'This is what Indiana basketball is.’ How NIL is helping bring fans closer to Hoosiers.

BLOOMINGTON – Sunday afternoon, just before Eric Pankowski walked from Assembly Hall over to Cook Hall for the final event of a fan-oriented weekend with IU’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, Trayce Jackson-Davis stopped him.

Jackson-Davis and his teammates had been central to the weekend’s festivities. Across what Pankowski envisioned as a sort of spring training-type celebration of IU basketball, they worked a fantasy camp, scrimmaged at and participated in a fan fest, and spent substantial time signing autographs and posing for pictures, all of it benefitting the athletes involved through the Hoosier Hysterics HH NIL Collective.

As his weekend wound down, Jackson-Davis just wanted to say thanks.

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“He said, ‘Listen, I just want to thank you,’” Pankowski said, recounting the exchange. “‘What you guys did to put on this weekend to allow us to connect to fans both young and old in this way, this is what Indiana basketball is.’”

Organized by Pankowski and Ward Roberts, co-hosts of the popular Hoosier Hysterics podcast, this year marked the second installment of a fan fest that grew from a one-night affair in Year 1 to a weekend full of events in Year 2.

In addition to the fantasy camp and fan fest, coaches and alumni participated in a golf scramble on the Pfau Course near campus. IU’s women’s basketball program hosted a skills camp Sunday morning Pankowski said reached roughly 100 sign-ups.

And the fan fest championship game ended in a buzzer-beating 3 and a dogpile on the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall court, with Kaleb Banks and Tamar Bates in the scrum with the team they’d helped coach.

All of it benefitting athletes financially through name, image and likeness opportunities.

This has been one of the most tangible, functional changes brought to college athletics by NIL reform. In the preceding two decades, the rise of chat rooms, message boards and, ultimately, social media, left college athletes more exposed to the world than ever before. For college athletic departments — with rapid staff expansion fueled by exploding television revenues — the response has often been to throw up walls between those athletes and the public.

Press appearances are more limited and tightly controlled, and athletes heavily coached on how to remain bland no matter the line of questioning. Fan-oriented events like the old IU basketball summer barnstorming tour have been pared down or eliminated either by choice or by rule. Even on campus, athletes are increasingly sequestered in specific dorms or, in some cases, quartered completely separate of the student body.

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Social media engines like Twitter and Instagram allow glimpses behind that increasingly heavy curtain, but one-to-one interaction has been pulled back substantially.

Now, NIL is bringing that curtain down.

“Eric and Ward did a great job,” Jackson-Davis told IndyStar.

Events like this past weekend’s fan fest — for which tickets ranged between $5-149 dollars — benefit athletes directly, while also allowing them a space to interact freely and directly with fans.

“For these players to be able to see fans and interact with (fans) in an up close and personal way, adds a perspective they don’t usually get because fans are usually behind the ropes, if you will,” Pankowski said. “There are no ropes in this event.”

NIL has taken on a variety of forms in its first year-plus as law of the land in college sports. Many revolve around one-to-one business or charitable relationships between athletes and organizations, while others are likeness-driven (merchandise sales, for example). A hefty share of NIL deals are just in-kind arrangements, allowing athletes to promote businesses or products in exchange for a share of them, like free meals at a local restaurant.

But in many places, it’s also allowed collectives to set up events like this weekend’s festivities in Bloomington, involving and benefitting athletes while bringing them closer to their fan bases.

“It removes, I think, a lot of layers,” Pankowski said. “Yes, I think clearly some of this is NIL. That is the driving force, what makes this possible. But all of that goes away the second you’re interacting with people.”

Pankowski pointed to players’ celebrations after the fantasy camp finale Sunday, which circulated on Twitter.

“Go look at the videos online of how Kaleb Banks reacted when his team hit the buzzer beater. He’s on the bottom of the dog pile,” he said, laughing. “Money has nothing to do with that. They get caught up in the emotion of wanting their guys to win.”

Jackson-Davis used IU’s freshmen as an example of the benefits its players will feel from the event.

Having never played in front of an Assembly Hall crowd, last weekend was their first person-to-person interaction with Indiana fans on that scale. Pankowski said both Jalen Hood-Schifino and Malik Reneau mentioned their experiences to him, while Jackson-Davis saw the comfort his younger teammates took from the weekend.

“It was really, really good for them,” he said, “even just getting a little taste of what Assembly Hall is like.”

Last weekend’s event marked a substantial expansion from HH NIL’s first installment in fall 2021, with ticket sales for the Saturday night fan fest up about 2,000 from last year. Pankowski said that’s the largest turnout for an event Pro Camps, the third-party company that helped organize the event, has ever seen.

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The date might shift slightly. This year fell on move-in, situating it in one of Bloomington’s highest-traffic weekends. But while Pankowski said there might be an effort to avoid that in the future, he does want to ensure it’s staged after students return to campus so they can participate as well.

“It’s right at the tipping point of where everyone misses IU basketball because we haven’t had it in five or six months,” Jackson-Davis said, “but it’s close enough to the season where we’re in good shape and playing good basketball, and people are just excited for this season generally.”

Pankowski has already asked IU Athletics to reserve the space for next year.

“I went to the athletic department already and said sign us up for next year,” he said. “I do want this to become an annual tradition.”

A tradition that would not have existed before name, image and likeness became allowed. One of the myriad ways NIL has reshaped not just college sports, but also how athletes, coaches and fans interact within them.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How NIL, Hoosier Hysterics are bringing fans closer to IU basketball