PITTSBURGH — Pressure isn't anything new to Sean Clifford.
For the past three years, he has been Penn State's starting quarterback, the person who carries a large share of the responsibility for how a storied program with an enormous and equally passionate fan base ultimately fares. He's accustomed to tense situations and how to make the most of them.
What awaits him now is something other than a crucial third down or a defensive end charging at him from his blind side.
Clifford has launched Limitless NIL, an agency that represents college athletes and looks to maximize their value in an era in which they can profit off of their name, image and likeness (NIL). While various professional agencies, financial consultants and other representatives have guided college athletes through unfamiliar terrain for the better part of a year, Clifford's venture is believed to be the first one founded and operated by a college athlete.
"I think we have the opportunity to really take over this landscape and do it the right way," Clifford said during a phone interview. "When I envisioned it, I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I would want, my brother would want and my teammates would want. I think we're on the right path. Moving forward, we have a bunch of opportunities to be successful in this space."
Clifford filed paperwork in late January to officially form Limitless, but the idea behind it had been percolating for much longer.
After NCAA legislation last year allowed athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness for the first time, Clifford was an in-demand target for companies and brands. To date, he has made more than $100,000. While not unpleasant, his experiences with professional agencies left something to be desired, as they didn't understand the nuances of college athletics quite as well as they did major professional leagues. As he saw it, there were few people better equipped to navigate the new landscape than someone embedded in it.
"These professional agencies, they deal with professional athletes. They're trying to dip their hand into NIL with college athletes, which is great, but they just don't have the staffing sometimes and 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old kids are much different than a 30-year-old professional athlete," Clifford said. "There's just a difference there. Through my experiences, I felt there was a definite need moving forward for collegiate athletes specifically."
As Clifford constructed it, Limitless is built around three tenets — financial literacy and education, content creation and marketing, and talent representation. Limitless has partnered with Beacon Pointe, a financial advisory firm, to provide private wealth management consultation to its athletes, from investment advice to answering questions about taxes. Each athlete is partnered with a Limitless staffer to help build a content creation plan to enhance the athlete's brand. On Limitless' website, there's a page for companies interested in working with athletes to reach out. The agency will help with other matters like time management, as well.
"I was asked a lot 'Are you a marketing company or a talent representation company?' I said 'Why can't we do both?' " Clifford said. "The athlete, if they're going to be dealing with an agent, they need to have all three — they need that finance piece, they need that talent representation, and they need to be able to market themselves and be creative. That's how Limitless was formed — seeing the three needs that I needed and polling other student-athletes and asking what they wanted in an agency. It was really a collective effort of a bunch of student-athletes getting together and figuring out, OK, what is best for us?"
Including Clifford, Limitless currently has six employees — chief athlete officer Aeneas Hawkins, a former Nittany Lions defensive tackle who retired from football in January after several lingering injuries; director of brand relations Brad Kraut; director of development Liam Clifford, Sean's younger brother and a freshman wide receiver for Penn State; chief peer officer Trevor Robinson; and director of graphics Drew Britt. Four of the six are college students.
At this early stage in its existence, the agency has signed six athletes, four of whom attend Penn State — Ji'Ayir Brown, (football), Myles Dread (men's basketball), Anna Camden (women's basketball) and Ishaan Jagiasi (men's basketball). Limitless also represents Brenden Bates, a tight end at Kentucky who, like Clifford, is a Cincinnati native and Jaylin Marshall, a defensive back at Georgia Tech.
For those athletes, the appeal of Limitless was apparent. Brown told ESPN he had been frustrated previously with a relative lack of NIL interest in State College. Now, through Limitless, he's finalizing his first NIL deal, with Snap Custom Pizza in State College. Limitless plans to take a 15% cut on NIL deals. Dread, a starter for the Nittany Lions during the past two seasons, said he initially didn't have resources to help him with NIL-related matters and was drawn to Limitless by Hawkins, a good friend who sold it as an opportunity to make money to give back to the communities in which he has lived, like Detroit and Washington, D.C.
"I wanted to be a part of that pioneering group, be a part of something special, be able to benefit from it and pave the way for others behind me," Dread said Wednesday evening.
Jagiasi and Camden both have sizable social media followings, with 305,000 and 236,000 followers on TikTok, respectively. Camden had secured NIL partnerships prior to signing with Limitless and while Jagiasi had worked to capitalize on his reach, he often encountered problems balancing that side hustle with his basketball and academic responsibilities. Something as relatively simple as a conversation with a company would be turned into a game of phone tag due to practices, workouts, classes and flights to road games.
Like it is for other college athletes with precious little free time, Limitless eases that burden.
"I wasn't signed to an agency before, so I knew this would take some pressure off my shoulders," Jagiasi said in a phone interview. "I wouldn't have to go out and negotiate deals. They could help do that for me."
Clifford said he spoke with Penn State's compliance office to make sure everything he was doing was above board. He has the support of Nittany Lions coach James Franklin, who told ESPN "we are supportive of what Sean has done with NIL to this point and I hope to see more of our student-athletes take advantage of similar opportunities in the future, just as Sean has."
When Clifford embarks on his sixth season at the school this fall, he'll do so with a slightly lighter academic load, having already graduated with a degree in public relations. He's currently seeking a second degree in broadcast journalism, which will only take up four credit hours this fall.
It will give him that much more time to focus on an endeavor that he believes will force everyone working in the NIL space to match what he's offering.
"I think as long as the athlete is the center, I think Limitless can go as far as it wants to," Clifford said. "I'd love to build this business up to something way bigger than myself, way bigger than this team. I want to make this a movement. I want to position student-athletes for years to come."
