Jeremiyah Love | Future Notre Dame RB, Comic Hero
The impact Name, Image & Likeness has had on the world of recruiting may have been unintended, but it certainly wasn’t unexpected.
Allowing college athletes to capitalize on their individual brands made sense from a fairness and financial standpoints for the NCAA.
With college athletics becoming a true billion-dollar business, the old model prohibiting athletes from earning anything was unsustainable and rather than foot the bills themselves, NCAA members decided to pass them onto third parties.
The speed with which NIL has become a dominant force in recruiting – with collectives set up at various schools as virtual slush funds for top prospects – may have been surprising, but everybody knew this was where we’d end up eventually.
Yet, it’s not where everybody has ended up and certainly not Notre Dame.
For better or worse, the Irish are holding firm in trying to “maintain their principles” in this new world of college athletics. But, if they’re going to have any chance at maintaining their place from a competitive standpoint, they’re going to need to hope for more prospects like Jeremiyah Love.
It’s naïve to imagine NIL being used strictly in the spirit it was designed – at least on paper – but that’s exactly what Love is doing.
The 2023 St. Louis running back announced his commitment to Notre Dame on Saturday, choosing the Irish over offers from schools like Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Michigan and several others.
And when we say offers, we don’t just mean scholarship offers.
According to sources, Love turned down multiple lucrative, guaranteed NIL offers from collectives at other schools to choose Notre Dame, where nothing comparable was presented.
That’s not to say those offers weren’t considered. One would have to be a fool or tremendously well-off (or both) to not even consider the kinds of opportunities placed in front of Love.
In the end, he decided to bet on himself and the belief that Notre Dame’s global status would position him to build up his brand for a chance to capitalize even more in the long run.
And he’s not waiting around to do it.
With his father, Jason, and cousin, Jared Teer, he’s already started crafting his brand in the form of a comic book superhero.
A middle school English teacher, Teer writes fiction and comics on the side.
Jeremiyah, Jason and Teer are working together to craft the plotlines and the character arcs for the project while an illustrator in Florida provides the artwork.
"We thought we would be creative with our NIL stuff and decided to do the work ourselves and not depend on others to bring deals to us,” Jeremiyah says.
That’s the origin story of the idea.
We’ll have to wait a couple months to get the complete origin story of Love’s character, but we do know it’ll combine two of Love’s passions, football and science.
“Jeremiyah is a Science major, so in the comic he’s an intern for a mad scientist,” his father explains.
Teer took a character he’s been exploring and modified it to fit his little cousin and make the project a bit more youth-friendly.
“Through genetic manipulation and experimentation on youth athletes, he ends up changing into the werepitbull, a character that’s never been done before,” Teer explains.
“Jeremiyah plays football against all of these other super characters who can transform into different types of were-creatures.”
The comic will be targeted at kids between the ages of 7 and 15 with the importance of being a true student-athlete as a primary message.
“I love football but it’s also dangerous,” Jeremiyah says. “I want kids to know it can be done as safe as possible while making a lot of friends. Football teaches people how to get along, and how to learn from each other.
“It helped my confidence and so far, it has given me the opportunity to come to one of the best schools in the world.”
Love’s parents saw a dramatic shift in their son academically once he truly became engaged in sports.
“Football was that mechanism that helped him control himself and became a super student,” Jason Love says. “He went from a C/D-student to an A-student overnight.”
Jeremiyah is hoping to be a role model for the next group of athletes.
“Football did this for me and it will possibly help younger kids find themselves and hopefully make them better people,” he says.
NIL wasn’t even a thought when Jeremiyah was emerging as a young athlete who could land scholarship offers one day.
“It was all about sending my son to the best academic school,” Jason says.
Jason sees NIL as a way to provide opportunities for young athletes and their families, especially those coming from impoverished backgrounds.
“NIL presents a financial boost for a lot of people,” he says, noting the amount of money adults have been making of college sports for decades.
“I think a lot of these coaches can become out of touch and forget how hard it is for these families coming up.”
Love and his team are hoping to have an 11-page teaser book out by December for purchase via hard copy, digital or both.
While the comic will be targeted at kids a tad younger, it could be of great interest to a particular subset of teenagers for other reasons.
“Once we develop our brand, we can have other young, aspiring athletes join the team and have a whole team of super athletes,” Jason says.
“Who knows? All types of different processes can branch off of this.”
Not coincidentally, Love and fellow Irish commit, 2023 cornerback Christian Gray, are working on bringing 2024 St. Louis wide receivers Jeremiah McClellan and Ryan Wingo to South Bend next year.
The group has already been dubbed, “The Fantastic Four.”
“If my friends come, they will be able to become part of a mini-series.”