Touched by students’ struggles, San Diego State men’s basketball team pledges NIL money to support food pantry

SAN DIEGO — The week before Thanksgiving, the San Diego State men’s basketball team spent the afternoon at nearby Hoover High School helping with the food distribution program that Feeding San Diego operates at 50-odd schools across the county.

Players packed bags of produce and canned goods, then handed them to students in lines snaking through campus to bring home to their families. Senior guard Nick Boyd was tasked with logging the number of household members for each student and how much food they needed.

“You don’t really realize, sometimes, how serious it is,” Boyd said. “I thought we were just going to a regular food pantry with adults who were struggling themselves. Just to see the students, to see how many students, came through those lines and grabbed groceries for their families, wow, it was definitely eye-opening.”

The players returned to their university bubble and got to talking. The event was part of their obligation to the MESA Foundation, the basketball team’s NIL collective that sends them monthly checks under rules allowing them to profit from their name, image and likeness, which in high-profile college sports has become an unabashed river of cash to players.

Boyd and fellow seniors Jared Coleman-Jones and Kimo Ferrari called a team meeting. Feeding San Diego has a wait list of 45 schools to join its School Pantry Program, which costs between $25,000 and $50,000 per school per year. Their idea: Why not donate a portion of their NIL money to help fund one?

“Being a San Diego kid growing up, you know how much the city supports the Aztecs,” said Ferrari, a Francis Parker High School alum who transferred to SDSU from Brown for his final college season. “Being on the other side of that, we just want to give back to the community. It was very easy. We put it up to a vote, and it was a quick decision.”

Added Coleman-Jones: “Everybody jumped at the opportunity. There was no static, no pushback. It was, ‘We’re doing this. Of course.’ "

Instead of donating a flat percentage of their combined NIL income, estimated at $1 million this season, they privately pledged individual amounts. Everyone on the team gave something, including the non-scholarship players, who pay their own tuition and receive minimal NIL compensation.

“I go to a lot of charity events, and everyone holds up the paddle (in an auction) for the biggest amount of money and that’s great,” said coach Brian Dutcher, whose No. 20-ranked Aztecs lost, 67-66, to Utah State at home on Saturday. “But any amount of giving makes a difference. What level they gave at, I don’t know. I don’t ask that question. But giving is giving. That last paddle up means as much as the first paddle. They’re giving back their own money to make a difference in the community, and that means a lot to me.

“That’s why we have the program we have, because we have good kids and they’re about the right things and do things that never cease to amaze you.”

Allison Glader, who helped organize the Hoover High School event for Feeding San Diego, was impressed with how engaged the players were and how much the students appreciated their involvement. She had no idea that involvement would extend to their bank accounts.

Asked the average age of donors, Glader laughed and said: “Not college kids. That’s what is so neat about it. The average donor is probably double their age. … We’re at Hoover, and you could see some of these kids getting food are the same age as some of these players. To have them, on their own, come together and decide they want to support this cause is all led by them.

“You don’t hear stories like that, especially right now. Hopefully it inspires a lot of other people to do the same thing across the country.”

Some college players have set up charitable foundations with their NIL largesse, as pro athletes typically do. Boyd, who transferred to SDSU from Florida Atlantic, works with a group in Florida that helps disadvantaged kids buy sports equipment and pay registration fees. Coleman-Jones worked with a Christian ministry that distributes food during his prior stop at Middle Tennessee.

But stories of an entire college team donating to a single cause are rare, if not unprecedented.

And SDSU athletes, while well-compensated compared to many mid-major programs, are toward the lower end of NIL payouts among the power conference teams they regularly compete against in the NCAA Tournament. Sources say Oregon, for instance, has an NIL kitty of $4 million this season for men’s basketball.

“When people talk about how NIL is bad for college basketball,” Coleman-Jones said, “I think they’re referring to the negative connotations of the selfishness of college athletes, that I’m going to this school or getting in the transfer portal for this amount of money. MESA is giving us the opportunity to connect with the community, and you see the community’s needs, and you have the means to give back. I feel like, why not?

“What good is it if you have something and you can’t share it with someone? That’s the biggest part. We just want to share the good feelings, the good vibes that we have as a team, the energy we have surrounding this whole environment, this whole culture. We just want to share it.”

When the NIL era dawned in college sports three years ago, Dutcher talked to boosters about creating a collective unaffiliated with the athletic department that served as a clearinghouse for booster donations that ultimately would be distributed to players. But he added a twist. He didn’t want players simply receiving money with nothing in return.

The MESA Foundation (the acronym stands for Mentoring and Empowering Student-Athletes) is unique among collectives in that it requires players to attend a half-dozen community events per year — ALS walks, blood drives, inner-city basketball clinics — as well as promoting other causes via their social media accounts. Don’t participate, don’t get a check.

The Hoover event held special significance because it’s a mere two miles from campus and because it’s the alma mater of assistant coach JayDee Luster, where his photo (with more hair) hangs on the gym wall as a member of its athletic Hall of Fame.

“When the players initially go to the events that we set up them for their MESA contracts, it’s certainly a thing they’re going to because they’re scheduled to go there,” MESA founder Jeff Smith said. “But once they’re a part of it, there’s a change in the way they look at their experiences helping the community.

“It’s pretty amazing, actually, that somehow Dutch and his staff get the same character quality of student-athlete here. Every single one of them, when they’re at the event, when they’re handing out food, when they’re promoting a blood drive, they’re really into it and enjoy doing it and really understand the impact they have on the community. It’s cool.”

They began asking questions about how many students received food bags at the semi-monthly pantry program at Hoover — roughly 300 of the 1,800 enrollment. About how many meals Feeding San Diego provides per year — 30 million. About how many meals Feeding San Diego has provided in its 17-year existence — 400 million.

About how much it would cost to take a school off the pantry program’s waiting list.

“The seed was planted,” Smith said.

“It was a no-brainer for us,” Boyd said.