Cal has an NIL Director! It should be a good thing
Justin DiTolla has been promoted from Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and Student Services.
For the most part the Bears have played it coy around the Name, Image and Likeness era, dancing around its existence. Even with the establishment of the Cal Legends Collective, which has organized many efforts to ensure Cal revenue athletes are properly given the resources they’re needed, there wasn’t much acknowledgement until recently.
That seems to be changing. Cal Legends is getting mentioned here and there by official Cal athletics people, and has shown up a few times on the Cal website. While it is hardly at the level of say a Texas or a Michigan, it is light years ahead of where the Bears once were.
And now finally, there will be someone on staff who will be taking over the role officially of managing NIL internally. The person for the job is Justin DiTolla, whose official title will be Associate Athletics Director for Name, Image and Likeness:
DiTolla has spent the past 2½ years as Cal's Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and Student Services, where he has worked closely with Cal student-athletes in their NIL endeavors. In his new role, DiTolla will manage all aspects of NIL at Cal, including advising and consulting with student-athletes, meeting with recruits, working with campus partners and other constituents, and providing additional resources to student-athletes to stimulate and execute NIL activities.
DiTolla will work with campus partners and others in the Cal community to provide NIL resources for Cal student-athletes - including Berkeley Haas, Berkeley Law and Learfield Cal Bears Sports Properties, among others. He will be influential in ensuring that Cal student-athletes thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of NIL.
"I could not be more excited to start my new role solely devoted to Name, Image and Likeness," DiTolla said. "This new position will provide tremendous value to our student-athletes in providing additional educational resources, brand building and stimulating NIL activities. The future of NIL at Cal is bright as we have some very exciting projects that will lead to more NIL activities for our student-athletes that will be launched in the near future. I look forward to the opportunity to engage with student-athletes in NIL as I believe it is crucial to our success at Cal."
There will be few more critical roles in this athletic department than NIL director. DiTolla will be in charge of bringing the entire program up to speed with how to best make NIL work for them. He will almost certainly be deeply embedded with the football and men’s basketball programs in critical seasons in ensuring that players are getting the most out of their opportunities.
In any case, we’re finally making the right moves. Hopefully it’s not too late.
Replacing DiTolla as Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and Student Services is Kat Brown, former Cal volleyball star who was previously the Cal Assistant Athletics Director for Compliance.
I guess I don't see the importance in this position as others do. NIL funding is done outside of the university purview and monies are distributed outside of the university. By the time an athlete decides to commit to Cal they have agreed to terms with the collective (not associated with Cal AD office). So, other than appointing someone into this roll to give the "appearance" that NIL is important to the AD what practical purpose does this serve? And given that DiTolla is likely a Knowlton minion I give this a big "MEH".
Absolute necessity these days. Hopefully he'll have good success working with our new Chancellor who came from Haas. Whether we like the NIL era or not, we've been finding some ways to survive and succeed so far. We'll have to avoid stupid mistakes (like obliterating our conference) to maintain ourselves as a legitimate P4 program with more options during the next phase of realignment.