The Endorsement Deals Shaping the N.C.A.A. Tournaments

Last spring, Isaiah Wong led the University of Miami’s men’s basketball team to its best season to that point, a run to the round of 8 in the N.C.A.A. tournament, where it lost to Kansas, the eventual champion. Weeks later, Miami added one of the top transfers in the sport: Nijel Pack, a sharpshooting guard from Kansas State, to form one of the best backcourts in Division I. On that same day, John Ruiz, a Miami alumnus and the chief executive of LifeWallet, announced on Twitter that Pack had signed a two-year deal with his company worth $800,000 plus a car. An agent representing Wong, who was also endorsed by LifeWallet, responded by telling ESPN that Wong would transfer if he didn’t receive a better deal that reflected “that he was a team leader of an Elite Eight team.”