What is M Power? Explaining Michigan footballs newest NIL initiative

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The launch of Michigan’s M Power program has been a whirlwind for John Rotche.

Events with donors and business leaders in Chicago and Grand Rapids. Presentations to recruits during a packed weekend of official visits. A quick trip to Northern Michigan, then back on the road for events in New York and Los Angeles. 

M Power’s stated mission is to “assist athletes as they develop personal brands, build and navigate business ventures and pursue opportunities through name, image and likeness.” Rotche’s job is to help fans, players and recruits understand exactly what that means. 

“The best way to look at it is: M Power is Michigan football’s NIL program,” Rotche said. 

Rotche, a successful entrepreneur with deep ties to the Michigan football program, was who coach Jim Harbaugh tapped to develop an in-house initiative that could work with various stakeholders — collectives, donors, businesses and athletes — to maximize NIL for Michigan players. The result was “M Power, A Brand for Life,” which launched last week with video testimonials from Harbaugh, J.J. McCarthy and Blake Corum. 

Rotche realizes the NIL landscape can be confusing for fans, donors, athletes and families. Part of M Power’s mission is to bring a centralized structure to what is, inherently, a decentralized and often chaotic environment. Think of it like a bridge connecting Schembechler Hall with the rest of the NIL ecosystem. 

“We’re the conduit for donors, for players, for education, for collectives,” Rotche said.

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Is M Power a collective?

No, M Power is not a collective. M Power works closely with two existing collectives, Champions Circle and Hail! Impact, but M Power itself does not collect or distribute money for NIL deals, Rotche said.

“If someone calls me and says, ‘I have a marketing opportunity for a player,’ I’m going to say, ‘Great, call the collective,’” Rotche said. “If I have a donor that would like to donate towards anything, I’m going to send them to the collective. With respect to distribution of revenue, that also comes from the collective.” 

The relationship between collectives and athletic departments is a tricky one. Athletic departments can provide educational resources related to NIL and assist collectives in raising money, but when it comes to distributing that money, collectives are supposed to operate independently. 

For the past year, Michigan football supporters have sought ways to facilitate more cooperation between the program, the collectives and the business community. M Power does that by connecting players to business leaders while assisting collectives in raising donor funds through events like the ones Harbaugh attended last week in Chicago and Grand Rapids. 

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At M Power events, it’s not just the collectives pitching themselves — it’s also the football program’s in-house NIL team explaining what the collectives do and why donors should support NIL.

“Especially when you talk to some of these more seasoned donors who have a lot of capacity, they may not understand (NIL),” Rotche said. “Our job is to teach them the true landscape of college football because it’s here and we support it. We just want to do it differently.” 

How did M Power start?

When Harbaugh wanted someone to head up a new NIL initiative, Rotche was a natural person to call. 

In the 1980s, Rotche was headed to Michigan on a football scholarship before a neck injury ended his playing career. He stayed involved with the program while earning his degree, and later launched his career as an entrepreneur with a single Domino’s pizza franchise in Ann Arbor. Since then, he’s built a diverse portfolio of business ventures, from Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Title Boxing gyms to his own HVAC cleaning franchises. 

Rotche is the founder and CEO of Franworth, a venture capital firm that invests in emerging franchises — and has Drew Brees as one of its partners. He also ran a mentorship program with the NFL, wrote a book about entrepreneurship and had a role on Michigan’s support staff early in Harbaugh’s tenure. 

Early in 2023, Harbaugh enlisted Rotche to work with linebackers coach Chris Partridge on a NIL program for Michigan football. They wanted to stay true to Harbaugh’s mantra that playing for Michigan should be “transformational, not transactional” while ensuring Michigan players weren’t getting shortchanged in the NIL market. 

“We spent countless hours and weekends and nights really, really looking at, what is the best program we can put together?” Rotche said. 

The result was M Power, which has a dual mission. Yes, M Power wants to make sure NIL is well-funded at Michigan. It also wants to facilitate mentorship, internships and workshops to help players manage their newfound wealth. 

“If you’re just giving these kids money without the skill set and the wherewithal (to manage it), you’re really going to hurt a lot of young men,” Rotche said.

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Is this a sign that Michigan is changing its stance on NIL?

Not exactly.

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Michigan supports NIL, as does any school that wants to compete in modern college athletics. Whether Michigan has been forward-thinking in its approach to NIL is a different question. Athletic director Warde Manuel published a letter in December expressing support for Michigan’s collectives, but the athletic department doesn’t have a full-time NIL director and has mostly tried to stay above the fray.

Rotche described Michigan’s approach as “methodical” and sympathized with the challenge of trying to come up with a strategic plan when the NIL landscape seems to change by the day. 

“It’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall,” he said.

When Harbaugh spoke to M Power supporters about the importance of not staying idle, he was describing a different perspective on NIL: the “innovate or get left behind” mindset. M Power is the football program’s attempt to move things forward, with or without broader implementation across the athletic department. 

Rotche and Manuel overlapped with the Michigan football program in the 1980s. When they met a few weeks ago to discuss M Power, Rotche said Manuel responded with enthusiastic support. The next day, chief of staff Doug Gnodtke was in Michigan’s football offices to talk specifics. 

“They’re totally leaning in,” Rotche said.

That doesn’t necessarily signal a change from above, though. The school’s posture remains relatively unchanged toward the major Michigan-affiliated collectives, which include:

• Champions Circle, which describes itself as a not-for-profit LLC operating in conjunction with Valiant Management, a for-profit NIL marketing agency.
• Hail! Impact, which is registered as a nonprofit corporation and awaiting determination on tax-exempt status.
• Stadium & Main, which has both a sports marketing arm and a nonprofit foundation.

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Hail! Impact launched in March with the goal of raising $5 million to fund annual stipends for players who participate in charitable and educational programs. With Harbaugh as the headliner, the M Power events are a way for founders Chin Weerappuli and Andy Johnson to speak directly to their target audience. 

“Chin and I could go around and do a roadshow,” Johnson said. “We’d get a few people, and it would be helpful. But it’s completely different when Coach gets in the room and talks about how he views NIL and embraces Hail as a nonprofit partner.” 

Is M Power just for football? What about the other sports?

M Power is strictly a football initiative, which means the collectives have to coordinate separately with Michigan’s other sports. Last week, Weerappuli and Johnson met with coaches from hockey, women’s basketball and other programs that aren’t under the M Power umbrella to explain how athletes from those sports fit into the Hail! Impact’s plans. 

If M Power succeeds, there’s hope that it could be a pilot program for other sports to adopt, allowing all Michigan athletes to benefit from the structure being implemented for football players.

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“The model football has put forward, I would hope, scales across athletics,” Johnson said. “You’ve got an M Power hockey division, M Power football, women’s gymnastics, whatever. I think it’s really powerful that they’re using what they can internally to set players up in the best position to use their NIL.”

That depends, among other things, on buy-in from Michigan’s administration. 

“M Power is predominantly football right now,” Rotche said. “Maybe it’ll expand (to) other sports. That’s more of an administration-type decision.”

For a school that prefers incremental progress to sweeping change, people involved with NIL at Michigan see the M Power program as a step forward. Whether it becomes a big leap depends on what happens next.

“It’s absolutely a net positive, a big net positive,” Weerappuli said. “Nothing’s perfect on the first iteration. I think we’re still in a significantly better place in this ecosystem than we were three months ago.”

(Top photo courtesy of John Rotche)

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