NIL Agency: How Jacob Piasecki Built an Empire Out of a College Townhouse
Jacob Piasecki, co-founder and CEO of A&P Agency, is this week’s guest on the Rebellious Times Podcast, recorded live in Jacob’s own studio in Austin. His NIL agency now represents over 150 college football players, built from a townhouse in College Station during his final semester at Texas A&M.
From a Physics Degree to Building an NIL Agency Out of a Townhouse
Jacob grew up in Houston and was finishing a second degree in economics at Texas A&M when the NIL rule change hit in 2021. His now co-founder was already embedded with the football program. A player there told him athletes would soon be able to profit from their own marketability. Neither of them knew yet what that would actually look like. They launched A&P Agency in May 2021 and made it official that July, right in the middle of the pandemic. Jacob spent eighteen-hour days cold-calling businesses on behalf of their first handful of athletes, splitting his time between that and class.
From the McDonald’s Bag to the $20 Million Revenue Share: How NIL Actually Works
Before NIL, top college athletes earned nothing directly, even as their schools profited from their names. Jacob points to the old “McDonald’s bag” story as a stand-in for how payments actually moved. Cash got slipped to recruits under the table, long before anything was legal. NIL first let athletes monetize their own social media reach. Then donor groups organized into “collectives,” paying athletes indirectly through marketing deals built to keep players at a program. Regulation eventually caught up through the CSC, a new enforcement body. Schools can now pay athletes directly, up to roughly $20 million a year in revenue share. That money is mostly concentrated in football and men’s basketball.
Why Jacob Pivoted From Marketing Deals to Contract Negotiation
A&P started purely as a marketing agency, connecting athletes with local businesses. Once collectives began driving real money into the space, Jacob realized the bigger value was in negotiation itself. No real benchmark existed for what a player should actually be paid. There was no way to look up what a starting quarterback in the SEC was worth. A&P built its own data set from every negotiation, every offer, every contract. It uses that today to value new clients against real, comparable deals rather than guesswork. That shift is why A&P now operates as a full NIL agency built around negotiation and data, not just marketing deals.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction, first in-studio episode
00:49 From Houston to Texas A&M: How A&P Agency Started
04:10 Why College Football Fandom Is Different From Every Other Sport
08:07 From Social Media Marketability to Donor Collectives
10:23 The McDonald’s Bag and the Rise of the $20 Million Revenue Share
14:39 Building A&P Out of a Townhouse
16:51 Why There Was No Way to Look Up a Player’s Value
22:26 Why NFL Agents Used to Laugh at NIL
26:34 Advice for Young Athletes Suddenly Managing Real Money
35:50 Where AI Already Helps Teams Build a Roster
39:41 The Human Judgment AI Still Can’t Replace
51:59 What’s Next for A&P Agency
The Human Side of NIL: Protecting Young Athletes Suddenly Managing Real Money
Jacob’s clients are often 17 or 18 years old, sometimes supporting their entire family’s mortgage and bills off a single contract. Many go into negotiations with no real sense of their own market value. They’re pulled between flattering coach pitches and a dollar figure now attached to every scholarship offer. Jacob says the job isn’t really about the athlete learning to negotiate. It’s about having someone experienced read between the lines on their behalf, so the athlete can focus on playing. He also shared a memorable detail from elsewhere in the industry. Some programs now bring in former intelligence operatives to sit in on recruiting calls, watching for dishonesty. The money at stake has gotten large enough to justify it.
Where AI Fits in Sports Representation, and Where It Doesn’t
Jacob already sees predictive AI models helping programs forecast how a transfer or recruit might affect a team’s win total. A&P uses its own proprietary algorithm, built on past offers and scouting grades, to generate real valuations for clients. Where he draws a hard line is team culture and character. No model yet accounts for whether a talented player will actually help or wreck a locker room. That’s still a judgment call for people, not software. Chris’s own framing: AI is best used to clear repeatable, operational work out of the way. That frees people to spend their time on the relationship work that actually can’t be automated.
Jacob’s Social links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-piasecki-4a00b525a/
Website: https://apsportagency.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apsportsagency/?hl=en
X: https://x.com/apsportsagency?lang=en
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