Haley and Hanna Cavinder, twin sisters on the Fresno State women’s basketball team, highlight WWE’s inaugural NIL class.
The Cavinders, 20, each have more than 330,000 followers on their Instagram accounts. They have a joint TikTok account with 3.8 million followers. They were profiled by ESPN in March due to their social prowess and being the leading scorers for Fresno State. In July, they became spokeswomen for Boost Mobile and had a billboard in Times Square.
They are two of the 15 college athletes are joining WWE’s new program. NIL stands for name, image and likeness, as the NCAA has recently opened the floodgates for players to capitalize on endorsement deals. WWE is using the acronym to title their program “Next in line.” Here is everybody in their inaugural class.
- Carlos Aviles (Ohio State Track & Field)
- Haley Cavinder (Fresno State basketball)
- Hanna Cavinder (Fresno State basketball)
- A.J. Ferrari (Oklahoma State wrestling)
- Lexi Gordon (Duke basketball)
- Aleeya Hutchins (Wake Forest track & field)
- John Krahn (Portland State football)
- Glen Logan (LSU football)
- Isaac Odugbesan (Alabama track & field)
- Mason Parris (Michigan wrestling)
- Masai Russell (Kentucky track & field)
- Jon Seaton (Elon football)
- Joe Spivak (Northwestern football)
- Dalton Wagner (Arkansas football)
- Riley White (Alabama track & field)
The NIL agreements with the athletes will include access to the WWE Performance Center in Orlando and access to resources to help them with brand building, media training, communications, live event promotion, creative writing and community relations. Olympic wrestling gold medalist Gable Stevenson was the first athlete to sign a multi-year NIL deal with WWE back in September. The general idea of the program is to serve as a funnel of elite athletes to potentially enter WWE’s talent development pipeline.