Kentucky hurdler leads field in image branding
Masai Russell is among highest collegiate track & field money makers on social media
Her mom chuckles about it now. But Masai Russell’s propensity for recording video of herself and family members when she was younger tried the patience of her parents more than once.
“There were times when she was punished for videotaping things that we did not think were appropriate,” Dr. Sharon Russell said of her daughter, an All-American hurdler for the University of Kentucky. “Like when people got into an argument. That did not need to be videotaped.”
Sharon recalls her husband Mark telling their daughter: “Your phone is either going to make you great, or get you in a lot of trouble!”
Today the outcome of her dad’s prediction is clear.
Russell, who will run in semifinal races of the NCAA Track and Field Championships later today, has parlayed her digital talents into industry-leading earnings in the new and evolving self-branding opportunities created by last year’s shift in NCAA rules to allow compensation for college athletes.
Since the change was instituted last July 1, Russell has managed to deliver quality collegiate track performances while generating a six-figure income as a dynamic competitor, cool personality, and hip influencer in the social media realm.
The 21-year-old Wildcat junior is a key competitor for a Kentucky team that could contend for a top-3 finish in the women’s meet that starts today at 6 p.m. Eastern time.
She is the No. 3-ranked entrant in the 400-meter hurdles and tied for sixth in the 100 hurdles with bests of 55.36 seconds and 12.71, respectively. In addition, she could be asked to run a leg on highly-regarded Kentucky teams that will compete in the semifinals of the 400 and 1,600 relays today.
“I will take every opportunity I’m granted,” Russell said of possibly running in the relays. “I’ve already worked so much in my individual events. So it’s always cool to step into the sprint zone. If I need to do it for the team, I’ll be there. But if not, I’ll be supporting my team every step of the way.”
The NCAA Championships is a four-day meet that began with the men’s competition on Wednesday at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field. Today will start the women’s competition. The men’s meet will conclude on Friday, with the final day of the women’s meet on Saturday. A daily event schedule can be found here.
Off the track Russell posts content about herself and her teammates on various social media outlets. Her YouTube channel has 33,000 subscribers, her Instagram account has 208,000 followers, and her TikTok profile is closing in on 500,000 followers.
When the NCAA agreed to allow collegiate athletes to be financially compensated for using their name, image, and likeness (NIL) to sell products, Russell was excited to take on the challenge because she already had followers, she said.
“I had a platform and I had a fan base so it was impressive to see how quickly I was able to turn the switch on from being a regular athlete to being an influencer and doing promotional videos and things like that.”
The NCAA had pushed back for decades on the idea of student-athletes being financially compensated for representing universities in their respective sports, but legal proceedings eventually forced the change, which gave athletes at the Division I, II, and III levels the opportunity to be part of what is projected to be a half-billion dollar industry in 2022.
“I was all in when I first heard about it,” Russell said. “I was super excited because I didn’t believe it was actually going to happen—it was something that was in the works for such a long time.”
As soon as the change happened, Russell began working to understand how to turn opportunity to advantage. Based on her social media following, she was immediately identified as an athlete with top-10 earnings potential.
While Masai refrains from going into details about how much money she has made through NIL deals, she said during a telephone interview that the amount is in the mid six-figure range.
Her website, masairussell.com, lists 24 brands – including Walgreens, Venmo, Google, KT Tape, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and H&R Block – she has worked with.
“It’s a little challenging, especially when it comes to being a D1 athlete,” she said. “But it’s not anything I can’t handle. I’m really good at time management because I am a very, very, very busy person while trying to balance school with my influencing, and also trying to be the best athlete as well.”
The origins of the NIL policy go back to 2009 when Ed O’Bannon, the most outstanding player of the 1995 NCAA men’s basketball tournament while a senior at UCLA, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, Electronic Arts (EA), and the Collegiate Licensing Company for using his name, image, and likeness in an NCAA basketball video game without his permission.
Eleven college athletes had joined O’Bannon’s class-action lawsuit by March of 2011, and former NBA stars such as Bill Russell – no relation to Masai – and Oscar Robertson later became plaintiffs as well.
In 2014, a judge ruled that the NCAA’s interpretation of amateurism violated antitrust laws. EA ceased producing NCAA video games and paid out $60 million in damages, and after more years of legal wrangling the NCAA was forced to allow athletes to sign NIL deals.
Meanwhile, use of social media – and the advertising that comes with it – has exploded since O’Bannon’s lawsuit was filed. The enormous growth benefits athletes like Russell, who has combined her natural sense with a solid work ethic to build the largest social media presence of any student-athlete at Kentucky.
“This NIL stuff came about at just the right time for her,” said Sharon Russell, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon. “She’s very comfortable in front of a camera just being herself, her authentic self.”
Her parents note she has recently signed contracts that haven’t yet been announced, including with a fitness apparel and accessories brand that is Masai’s longest deal to date – a one-year contract.
Her contract with WWE is for 10 months, and if the 5-foot-5 dynamo doesn’t end up running track professionally, it could open the door to her becoming a performer in the company’s wrestling production.
While the idea of getting paid for the use of their name, image and likeness no doubt sounds appealing to collegiate athletes at schools governed by the NCAA, Masai’s parents said there is a steep learning curve when it comes to understanding all the legal language included in contracts.
Sharon Russell said the compliance office at Kentucky does a great job working with athletes in regards to the NIL process, but she still goes over every potential contract, as does family member India Russell-Pena, an attorney and Mark’s daughter from a previous relationship.
“We’re just trying to make sure Masai doesn’t sign something that we don’t understand,” Sharon said. “That she doesn’t end up giving exclusive rights to her services to a company.”
Although Masai is thriving in the NIL world, Mark worries about athletes who don’t have the kind of support from their parents that she does. He characterizes the current NIL landscape as one that “is not flat across the board and still very uneven.”
Jim Cavale, founder and CEO of Influencer (INFLCR), said in a January 14 article on On3.com that athletes need to be cognizant of the time required to excel in the NIL world.
“It’s not easy for an athlete on top of school, on top of workouts, on top of playing, to build and run an NIL business,” he said. “At the pro level, there’s agents, there’s players associations, there’s a lot of resources around the athlete to help them find opportunities and support them in the activation and fulfillment of those. Student-athletes are still figuring that out.”
While Mark Russell admits he used to be opposed to college “athletes ever getting paid,” Sharon remembers having passionate discussions with him in which she asked, “Why shouldn’t they get the money?”
Masai, runner-up in the 60-meter hurdles in the NCAA Indoor Championships in March, expresses sentiment similar to her mom’s when it comes to collegiate athletes being financially compensated.
“It’s long overdue,” she said. “Especially when a school was using their likeness to promote themselves on ESPN or billboards… I always believed that even when name, image, and likeness wasn’t a thing, that while college athletes were in school, some type of fund should have been set up for them so they would have something to their name for everything they have done for the four or five years they were at the university.”
Although Masai recently completed her fourth year at Kentucky and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in sports communications last month, she has another year of collegiate eligibility remaining because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she is unsure if she will be running for Kentucky next year as a graduate student or competing professionally.
Her dad, who co-founded The Maryland Oral Surgery Group with her mom nearly 10 years ago, admits Masai will have to improve her personal bests in order to turn pro. But he also knows she is in the part of the season when track and field athletes often turn in their best-ever performances.
It’s all exciting stuff for someone who topped the national list in the 300 hurdles as a senior at Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, in 2018, and whose best of 40.16 still ranks fourth on the all-time U.S. national high school performer list.
After initially making a verbal commitment to Texas A&M, Russell ended up signing a national letter of intent with Tennessee. However, she never ended up enrolling in the school because associate head coach Tim Hall was hired at Kentucky.
Hall was a big reason why Russell signed with Tennessee, so when he departed for Kentucky, she filed paperwork asking to be released from her commitment to the Volunteers’ program.
She had never been on campus at Kentucky, but took a leap of faith because Hall was able to offer her an athletic scholarship.
“I knew nothing about the school and I didn’t know the team,” Russell said. “But when I came to Kentucky, it was just like a family-oriented team. I love the vibe here, and I’ve never questioned the transfer during my four years here. It was really sent from God because I had so much going on, and this kind of fell into my lap. It’s been amazing ever since.”
Russell, who is described by her dad as “strong-willed and sure of who she is as a woman and athlete,” began running track when she was eight years old. She began to experience success in the 400 at the age of 10 before giving the 300 hurdles a try as a high school freshman.
She was not an overnight sensation in the event, but ran 42.15 as a junior to rank 18th on the yearly national high school performer list. She also placed second in the 400 hurdles in the 2017 USA Track & Field Junior (age 19 and under) Championships before winning a bronze medal in the Pan American U20 (under 20) Championships in Lima, Peru, that summer.
She slashed nearly two seconds off her personal best in the 300 hurdles as a senior and also ran 13.93 in the 100 hurdles, an event she took up the previous year.
Although she has had more success in the 400 hurdles – an event in which she won a silver medal in the 2019 Pan American U20 Championships in San Jose, Costa Rica – than the 100 hurdles, Russell does not prefer one event over the other.
She says the most enjoyable thing about the 100 hurdles is she doesn’t have to focus on the entire race while contesting it. It is such a quick and reactive event that it requires you to concentrate on each of the 10 hurdles during the course of a race.
“The 100 hurdles make you focus on one hurdle at a time,” she said. “One thing at a time, rather than thinking about start to finish, if that makes sense.”
She said the 400 hurdles are not as taxing as the 100 hurdles in terms of having to react quickly, but the event is more physically demanding.
“The 100 hurdles are definitely a muscle memory race,” she said. “In the 400 hurdles, you can kind of take your time and process what is going on during the race. But when it comes to the short hurdles, you don’t have time to think because when you look up in 12 seconds, it’s over.”
Russell adds that in the 400 hurdles, “you’re going to feel that tightening up toward the end of the race and you’re not going to be able to walk for about 10 minutes afterward. The 100 hurdles, you walk off happy; you’re not really hurting. But if you hit one hurdle, the race can be over.”
While Russell enjoys the differences between the two events, she realizes she will most likely have to focus her attention on only one of them if she improves enough to be offered a professional contract.
In the short term, she’s going to see how the rest of the season plays out, as she has met the qualifying standards for the USA Track & Field Championships that will be held at Hayward Field from June 23-26.
“If I get the opportunity to be a professional, of course I’m going to take that opportunity,” she said. “I have two great options, either come back to school or run professionally. But no matter what happens, I will be back at Kentucky training.”
And no doubt expanding her presence in the name, image, and likeness universe.
[APRIL 1, 2023 UPDATE]
After concluding her junior season at the University of Kentucky with a third-place finish in the women’s 100-meter hurdles and a fourth-effort in the 400 hurdles in the 2022 NCAA Championships, Masai Russell placed sixth in the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships in the 400 hurdles two weeks later.
She has followed those performances with a terrific senior year — during which she is working toward a graduate degree — that has seen her set a then-collegiate record of 7.75 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles in January, run an identical time in finishing second in the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 11, and break the collegiate record in the 100 hurdles with a 12.36 clocking in the Texas Relays earlier today.
Russell’s time, which came after she had run a wind-aided 12.61 effort in her qualifying heat the previous day, trimmed three hundredths of a second off the previous collegiate record of 12.39 set by Brianna Rollins-McNeal of Clemson in 2013 and moved her to eighth on the all-time U.S. performer list.
It was also the fastest time in the world this year and obliterated her personal best of 12.71.
I’ll have more detailed coverage of Russell’s collegiate record-breaking performance in my next Week in Review, and stay tuned for more updates as this season progresses.
Great story JO. Wishing her great success.