SPONSOR NOTE: JJ McCarthy, Andrel Anthony, and Donovan Edwards NIL NFTs

Leaders and Best - love the creativity and capitalization on the latest craze.  Now go get you some non-fungible tokens! 
By the way, who wants to buy some MgoCoin?

This is the only useful purpose for NFTs: legally laundering money from donors to cfb players

All aboard the NIL train!!

@Indy Pete. Can I use my Mgoblog points for the MgoCoins?

NFTs are my favorite way to launder money. My least favorite thing to be pitched. 

Cool, get the kids money!

But I'm not buying a freaking NFT.

Really perfect that NFT's became a thing right as NIL started. A money laundering match made in heaven

I'm glad the guys are making money, but NFTs are just beanie babies for crypto bros

Does anyone know how much of the purchase for these goes to the athletes? If I buy a blue NFT does that mean Edwards gets most/all of that $50? 

I'd also be curious about if/when this might expand to include some of the women's basketball team if anyone knows. 

I love it. Also I believe UM will have the best offense in the BIG.

What's an NFT? 

"Non-fungible token."

Or "No-fee tattoo" if you play for OSU. 

Oh hell yeah. Love to see it!

@blueinrockford - right now it can be purchased with wired USD and Bitcoin, hoping to get some functionality with mgopoint conversions with the next upgrade…

You know, I wondered what NFTs were. Now I know. A fancy name for 21st Century trading cards.

Good on the players for making some money off themselves.

Boo on NFT and everything surrounding that

would be cooler if you were buying the actual, physical trading card these appear to be.

Get your right-clicks ready to screen shot those NFTs!

Not so old (or addlebrained) enough that I don’t remember the 1980s and 1990s when some of my family members were asking me to:

(1) take them to card shows or hit up all the local Toys R Us stores so that I could empty my bank account to help them stock up on sports trading cards (Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, Fleer, et. al) and Kenner Starting Lineup sports figures, or, 

(2) to make it worse, stop on the way home from my office at every McDonald’s that still was open late at night so that I could buy several Happy Meals that came with Beanie Babies and load up the refrigerator with lots of soggy McNuggets and fries.

There are days when this empty nester looks at all the “stuff” packed in boxes and plastic containers in my basement and the closets in what used to be my children’s bedrooms and never thinks, “If only I hadn’t bought all of those things, I now might have enough money to buy an NFT from some college athlete whom I don’t know and never may meet.”

Years before he died in early 2017, through a friend of mine who knew much more about sports-card collecting than I ever did, I met Alan “Mr. Mint” Rosen who then might’ve been among the best known sports card and sports memorabilia collectors. He helped to jump start the baseball card collecting craze in the 1970s and 1980s.

By the time I’d spent way too much money on sports cards, Starting Lineup figures and Beanie Babies, I learned from him that I might have to wait more than another 50 years before I’d make a profit selling any of that “stuff”. Now, my children couldn’t care less about that “stuff”.

To all of you out there who are about to buy those NFTs, good luck and I hope you profit from them some day.

Where have you gone, "Big Ten Trea$ure Hunter" John Arcand?

This is cool, but I’m still looking for that Billy Ripken card with Fuck Face inscribed on the bat. 

Idk a one on one zoom call just seems weird to me. Maybe because I’m an awkward person and dread one on one conversations with strangers. 

MJG: If you're really looking for that 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken error card, there's one in "Gem Mint" condition being offered for a mere $899.99 on ebay. LINK

Although somewhere among the numerous boxes of sports cards in my basement, I believe that I have a 1989 Fleer MLB Factory set, but because it's probably still in the sealed box, I have no idea if the Billy Ripken error card is in it, but I suspect that it isn't.

Paying to meet anyone, especially a college kid, seems strange to me.

I bought the JJ and DE blue versions a couple of days ago and haven’t received a “delivery” email yet, just the confirmation email. Anyone else run into this?

@chatster - the difference being that Starting Lineup figures had intrinsic value - b/c they were awesome!! My Darryl Strawberry and Akeem Olajuwon ones were my favorite.

I don't care how valuable they are.  Any kid who bought a Starting Lineup action figure and kept it in its packaging was lame.

jmblue: My kids opened virtually all of those Starting Lineup figures (baseball, football, basketball and maybe even some hockey) that I bought for them. They had them displayed on the shelves in their rooms. They’re all sitting crushed together in some large plastic containers in my basement. When the kids became older, they still had several of those figures that they'd never opened and that remain unopened.

One of my children, a Michigan alum, may have kept the Jim Abbott, Desmond Howard and Charles Woodson Starting Lineup figures.

NFTs are the modern replacement for the old recruiting tradition of NFBs (non-fungible bags of cash).

In all seriousness, this approach aligns most closely with the NIL intent. A Miami group giving every player $50k or Texas funding every OL thru a charity or other cash for playing is just a recruiting ploy.

Glad to read about another way for these players to get compensated. This feels like Michigan might be ahead of the curve (or at least with the curve) on this one.

Just bought one each of the Andrel and Donovan NFTs. JJ is entirely sold out. Putting my money where my mouth is. 

Congrats to both.

Here's a song for all of us old timers whose mothers decided to donate our sports cards and comic book collections to the garbage collectors.  

Good for the kids