16 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021 
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Maddie Nolan making strides with 

Leigha Brown still out

The 
Michigan 
women’s 

basketball team had a hole to fill 

ever since junior wing Leigha Brown 

became ineligible for play due to 

COVID-19 protocols on Jan. 7, right 

before the Wolverine’s match-up 

with Nebraska.

Brown was an integral part of 

Michigan’s early success that led to 

a 10-0 start. Without her, Michigan 

has struggled to put points on the 

board and guard opposing teams’ 

perimeter threats. 

“I think the hardest part is 

learning to play without (Brown),” 

fifth-year senior guard Akienreh 

Johnson said after a win over Illinois 

on Jan. 10. “(Brown’s) such an 

offensive presence. She can really get 

any shots she wanted, whenever she 

wanted.”

But with Brown out, Michigan 

might have found their new bright 

spot in sophomore guard Maddie 

Nolan.

Nolan’s no stranger to stepping 

into big roles. Last season she 

contributed big minutes late in 

the season after multiple players 

sustained 
significant 
injuries. 

Her 
breakout 
game 
against 

Northwestern in the quarterfinals 

of the Big Ten tournament, with 13 

points and eight rebounds, made 

her a consistent substitute for tired 

guards early in her sophomore 

season. She’s a scrappy defender that 

made teams uncomfortable.

After a brief stint of junior guard 

Danielle Rauch trying to fill the spot 

left by Brown, Michigan coach Kim 

Barnes Arico decided it was time to 

pencil Nolan into the lineup once 

again.

“Last year when we made our 

run in the Big Ten Tournament and 

when Kayla (Robbins) went down 

with her injury that she stepped in 

and really did a tremendous job for 

us,” Barnes Arico said after a win 

over Wisconsin on Jan. 14. “But I 

think it was just her getting back her 

confidence, or knowing that she had 

the green light.”

Nolan had only started one other 

time this season against Oakland, 

when Johnson went down with a leg 

injury the game before. Nolan added 

three points and nine rebounds 

against the Golden Grizzlies.

But in her second opportunity of 

the season, Nolan proved she’s more 

than capable of holding a starting 

spot. Against Wisconsin on Jan. 

14, she had 21 points — 15 of which 

came from beyond the arc. In the 

Wolverines’ final game before the 

two-week shutdown, Nolan had six 

rebounds and five assists. 

She brought a 3-point threat back 

to Michigan’s offense, something 

it missed without Brown. In the 

defensive end, Nolan uses her 

quickness to disorient other guards. 

Contributing on both sides of the 

floor, Nolan fills in the gaps.

“Last 
year 
gave 
her 
an 

opportunity to really play, and to get 

experience as a freshman,” Barnes 

Arico said after that same Wisconsin 

game. “Now her confidence is at 

another level. She’s a big strong 

guard, she defends exceptionally 

well, she rebounds well and she can 

shoot the ball and that really gave us 

an option from the outside.”

While Nolan can’t fully replace 

Leigha Brown, her performance 

shows that Michigan has many 

starting options. Nolan has the 

potential to grow into Brown’s 

shoes. And with Johnson and senior 

forward Hailey Brown graduating 

this season, the Wolverines will 

need replacements in the lineup. 

Nolan’s 
continued 
development 

will be necessary for sustaining the 

program’s success in the coming 

seasons. 

ABBIE TELGENHOF

Daily Sports Writer

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily

With Leigha Brown out due to COVID-19 protocols, Maddie Nolan has stepped into the starting lineup and 
provided important contributions.

NCAA Football, NIL and a conversation with Denard Robinson

I’m on the phone with Denard 

Robinson, and I need to make an 

admission. I called him because of 

the news this week –– the kind of 

news that saves a very slow week 

when you have 

to turn in a 

column on 

Sunday night 

–– that EA 

Sports would 

be reviving its 

widely-beloved 

NCAA Football 

video game 

franchise. It 

won’t be this year, and it’ll be called 

EA Sports College Football instead 

of NCAA Football, but its release 

will mark the first new college foot-

ball game EA has made since 2013, 

when Robinson occupied the cover. 

I want to ask him about the 

dichotomy of being on the cover of 

a video game because of what he 

did as an unpaid college athlete. 

About what it’s like to be famous 

and unable to capitalize on your 

earnings potential and whether he 

thinks this news underscores the 

problem at hand.

But first I need to tell him: I’ve 

never played NCAA Football.

“Oh my gosh. Jesus,” he says. 

“What? Why not? So you never 

played NCAA, that’s what you’re 

telling me?”

Yup.

“This is bad. This is really bad. 

Who gave you the — come on, man. 

You gotta pick this game up. Do 

I gotta send this game to you and 

make you play it?”

Robinson, before he came to 

Michigan and played himself onto 

the cover, grew up the same way 

lots of people his age did: playing 

the game. He and his brothers 

would create players and try to 

win the Heisman Trophy, going 

through a four-year career then 

doing it again and again and again. 

He sounds the same way most 

people do when they talk about this 

game. It’s the sort of deep-rooted 

nostalgia that a new edition has a 

way of killing. When he got to be in 

the game, let alone on the cover, he 

thought it was the coolest thing in 

the world.

“Just to be one of the players on 

that — and it don’t even have my 

name, it just said 16 from Deerfield 

Beach, Florida,” Robinson said. 

“That just meant so much for my 

city, for me to represent my city. It 

felt unreal, you know.”

But the first part is the import-

ant part. It didn’t have his name 

because college athletes aren’t 

allowed to license their image for 

money. Instead, it had a nameless 

Michigan quarterback from Deer-

field Beach, Fla., with dreadlocks 

who wore #16 and ran the ball 

really well. 

When former UCLA basket-

ball player Ed O’Bannon sued the 

NCAA over his likeness being 

used without compensation in the 

same way, part of the effect was 

EA discontinuing the games. In 

the fine print of the announcement 

this week was a note that no player 

likenesses will be used in the new 

video game.

But by 2023, when the game is 

expected to launch, that decision 

might have nothing to do with 

O’Bannon v. NCAA. Twenty states 

have either passed or considered 

laws allowing student-athletes to 

capitalize on their image rights. 

Bills have been introduced at the 

federal level as well, with bipar-

tisan support, and the NCAA has 

started to lobby Congress not to 

vote the bills down, but only so 

it can have some level of control 

over what happens. In this respect, 

Democratic majorities in the U.S. 

House and Senate will likely make 

a bill more favorable to athletes if 

passed. 

Even if a federal bill isn’t passed, 

though, Florida’s bill goes into 

effect in July of this year. In the 

state of Michigan, a law passed in 

December and goes into effect in 

… 2023.

“College guys gonna need a 

union,” Robinson said. “And I say 

that because they’re gonna need 

someone to represent them. Cause 

somebody gotta be in that room to 

represent them. If it’s just NCAA 

people representing them, well 

then they’re gonna look out for 

the best for themselves. So I think 

somebody’s gonna have to be in that 

room to represent them and come 

up with some solutions.”

For a brief moment this August, 

it seemed like there was momen-

tum towards a union — or some-

thing resembling one — forming. 

A group of players including 

Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and 

Michigan’s Hunter Reynolds went 

on social media and tweeted a 

proposal, asking to play the season 

with universally mandated safety 

protocols, the ability to opt out, 

retain eligibility and create a Col-

lege Football Players’ Association. 

Then-President Donald Trump 

seemed to endorse it.

Two of those demands — a sea-

son and eligibility retention — were 

met. A third, universal safety proto-

cols, didn’t quite happen, but each 

conference had its own set of proto-

cols. That last one? You don’t hear 

much about that last one anymore.

I tell Robinson my pet theory: 

That a majority of players would 

never choose to sit out games in 

the name of forming a union, thus 

the effort will always fizzle out. “I 

think that’s the truth,” he said. At 

Michigan, he and his teammates 

noticed people getting in trouble 

for selling shoes, shirts, tickets or 

anything else. “Of course we had 

that conversation,” he said, “but we 

never came up with a solution.”

Robinson thinks athletes “need” 

to get paid, but he isn’t closer to 

finding that solution than anyone 

else. A union and health insurance 

would be a good place to start, 

though. Thanks to a stint in the 

NFL, Robinson has insurance now. 

At Michigan, though, when his 

earnings potential was at its peak, 

he was always a bad injury away 

from all those dollars evaporating. 

So his brother paid for insurance.

“I’m thinking I’m gonna get 

drafted,” Robinson said. “But if I 

get injured in my last year, I won’t 

be able to see any of the money that 

I thought I shoulda seen when I 

was in college.”

He brings up the case of Mar-

cus Lattimore, a running back 

at South Carolina the same time 

Robinson was at Michigan. In 

his freshman year, Lattimore ran 

for 1,197 yards, but he had severe 

knee injuries his sophomore and 

junior years. He got drafted by 

the San Francisco 49ers, but never 

played an NFL game. “He was 

one of the best backs in South 

Carolina history,” Robinson said. 

“... He played three years, four 

years in college and never got to 

see his real earnings because of 

(injuries).”

Robinson, of course, has his own 

story. Because he had graduated 

before being on the cover — EA 

approached him about it right after 

the last game of his senior year — 

he could be paid for that. But the 

man who might have been the most 

marketable Michigan football play-

er this side of Charles Woodson left 

Ann Arbor with that being the lone 

endorsement to his name.

“This is true,” he said.

So does it bother him?

“No, no,” he said. “… I think 

everything happens for a reason 

in life.”

Sears can be reached at 

searseth@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ethan_sears.

ETHAN 
SEARS

FILE PHOTO/Daily

When Denard Robinson played in Ann Arbor, he wasn’t able to profit off of his fame; that is set to change in 2023 
as Michigan passed House bills 5317 and 5218 allowing college athletes to be paid for endorsements.

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© cameron

