What went wrong with the Gator Collective for Florida football?

Now that NIL is the name of the game in college athletics, universities have tried to centralize their efforts to ensure that their athletes are compensated at the market rate. For Florida football and the rest of athletics in Gainesville, this was in the form of the Gator Collective.

But now that the Gator Collective is being dissolved in favor of Florida Victorious, it is fair to ask what went wrong with the Collective and why this new endeavor will be any better.

Florida Football: Show me the money

On the surface, the Gator Collective seemed like a reasonable response to the brand-new world of NIL. Since teams and athletic departments weren’t allowed to directly facilitate deals, the Collective was to act as a central organization athletes could funnel through to secure NIL money.

The problem is the organization was far from organized. Run by Eddie Rojas and Darren Heitner, among others, the Gator Collective just never seemed to have any real teeth to it. Complaints about the organization started up almost immediately from Gator fans long before the Jaden Rashada saga took place.

With too many hands in the cookie jar and not enough hands to steer the ship deals like the poorly done Rashada one put a massive stain on the University of Florida.

The main selling point of this new Florida Victorious initiative is that everything is supposed to be more centralized than it was with the Gator Collective. There will be a non-profit wing, which will work with organizations such as the Ronald McDonald House, and a wing designed to get athletes the most money possible.

The other selling point for fans is that Rojas and Heitner don’t appear to have involvement in Florida Victorious and instead the organization will be run be Nate Barbera, a Harvard MBA that has appeared on Shark Tank. Gary Condron, one of Florida’s biggest donors, will also have a role in the organization.

Whether this has any real impact going forward remains to be seen. Florida football can have the most organized NIL group in the country, but if booster aren’t cutting checks it doesn’t matter.

For now, the dark memories of the Gator Collective and Jaden Rashada can be left in the past as Florida tries to move forward.