Momentous Partners saw a market gap in helping college hoopers — without a guaranteed NBA future — secure NIL deals, endorsements, and pro representation.
In the modern one-and-done NIL era of men’s college basketball, most of the attention and representation go to elite freshman athletes projected as top NBA draft picks. Those premium prospects are coveted by the biggest agencies in the game, looking to lock up clients before they potentially earn hundreds of millions in the pros. However, NIL and forthcoming revenue-sharing rules also created a robust market for star college athletes who will play at college for four years and make far more money in NIL deals than they would in the G-League or overseas.
Top agencies often don’t have the bandwidth to provide these players the bespoke attention they deserve, passing on really good college players because they didn’t have a surefire NBA future. One company is capitalizing on this market inefficiency.
Last year, Joey Pennavaria and Daniel Hennes were helping four blue-blood college veterans — North Carolina’s Armando Bacot and RJ Davis, Duke’s Jeremy Roach, and Kansas’s Hunter Dickinson — with representation. Later that fall, Pennavaria and Hennes launched Momentous Partners as a full-service agency now representing more than two dozen men’s players such as Tennessee’s Zakai Zigler, many of whom you’ve watched during March Madness.
“I was really lucky to have four franchise college players. And as I talked to them, they would tell me that there’s a lot of guys who need this,” Hennes told Boardroom. “You’ve got great NBA agents and great overseas agents. Now, there’s this need for great, high-quality college agents. And our hope is to provide that for guys.”
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Rather than directly compete against entrenched top agencies, Pennavaria, the company president who was formerly at Glushon Sports Management, is working with them to either provide more bespoke treatment to existing clients or filter out and recommend reputable agencies for when their college eligibility is over. Hennes, the CEO, is always blunt and honest with his clients: If you help your teams win games, it’ll be easier to obtain those deals.
Momentous also helps educate players on the business side of how those endorsement deals get done, negotiate, invest, and become partners in fully capitalizing on their earning power as they star for winning programs and become local fixtures in their respective cities for years.
“I’m not going to be here with you for the NBA,” Hennes said, “so I want to train you to know enough so that you won’t need me. That’s worked because our clients have been great recruiters for us.”
As more players want to be involved in their own business decisions and processes, Momentous has partnered with its players in the NIL process. This will become even more important with the newly lifted ban on NIL deals signed before players enroll at school and revenue sharing, which won’t be as simple or clear-cut as it seems.
“If you look at the history of school and athlete labor relations, traditionally, the schools exploit the athletes as much as they possibly can,” Hennes said. “They want to get everything out of them. Now, they’re giving them money, but they want to control everything. So, a lot of the language in the contracts we’re seeing are like, yes, we’ll pay you, but we’ll own all your endorsement rights. We have the power to terminate without cause and all of these crazy clauses that would never go in an NBA contract or a collective bargaining agreement.”
Hennes added that schools will try to circumvent the revenue share cap to their advantage, advocating for collective bargaining in collegiate athletics. It further underscores the need athletes will have for agencies like Momentous who have their best interests in mind off the court.
As players across the country represent their respective schools and alumni over the coming days and weeks, Momentous will continue to represent star players who may be just outside of the bright spotlights placed on the sport’s elite pro prospects.
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