‘You're going to be a question on Jeopardy’: Looking back on Sarah Fuller’s NIL legacy

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I spent most of the day yesterday up in Milwaukee, helping share #tips and #tricks about the arcane dark arts of open records requests with students at Marquette. I’m digging my way through my inbox a bit today, which is why I’m happy to pass the mic over to regular Extra Points contributor and Friend of the Newsletter, Katie Lever.

Katie is checking in on one of the most important figures of the athlete marketability era that you might have already forgotten about. I’ll turn the time over to her….

In the fall of 2020, as the COVID pandemic raged, Sarah Fuller got an unexpected call from her soccer coach. It was just days after the Vanderbilt women’s team had won the SEC championship with Fuller in goal, and she was packing to go home for winter break.

Fuller missed the call, and when she saw who was trying to reach her, she had a bad feeling. “Oh no, I'm in trouble,” she recalled thinking. “Why is my coach calling me after the season?” 

She called him back, and he presented her with an unheard-of opportunity. The football team’s kickers were all in quarantine, he told her. “Would you be interested in coming and trying out?” he asked. 

“The first thought that went through my head was, I kind of want to go home and see my dogs,” Fuller recalled. “But then I was like, ‘Yeah, that could be cool.’”

Within the hour, she was kicking field goals, and she remembers making most of the 15 or so she attempted. The football staffers seemed impressed, and that was that; Fuller registered with the team and was fitted for shoulder pads and a helmet. And one thing she heard that day has stuck with her ever since. 

“You're going to be a question on Jeopardy one day,” the person fitting her for her shoulder pads told her.

“And then it just kind of took off from there,” Fuller said. “I mean, ABC was contacting my mom, and CNN was calling my dad, and we just were hit by the media overnight.”

Fuller had agreed to kick for a Vanderbilt team that was floundering at the bottom of the SEC — and the FBS as a whole. Even so, she became a symbol of hope and feminine empowerment during a time of political tensions, widespread economic instability and craving for the return of normalcy. In that climate, and in spite of her team’s eventual 0-9 record, she managed to seize opportunities … eventually. 

Had Fuller’s kick taken place today, she could have fast-tracked her path to success. But it came several months before NIL was legalized in college sports, limiting her immediate opportunities. Fuller was getting offers from brands, and she said she would have loved to have used the money to give back to nonprofits. “But I was stuck,” she added. “There was literally nothing I could do.”