USC guard JuJu Watkins established herself as a rising star with her historic freshman season, and she added another accolade to her already impressive resume on Thursday. Gatorade officially signed Watkins as one of its athletes, which makes her just the third college basketball player to join the roster with a Name, Image and Likeness deal.
She is in excellent company, as the other two are UConn star Paige Bueckers and former Iowa Hawkeye Caitlin Clark. As part of the deal, Watkins will be appearing in upcoming Gatorade marketing efforts and helping with the Gatorade Player of the Year program, among other things.
“Growing up as a young basketball player, I think that was every kid’s dream, including mine,” Watkins, a former Gatorade National Basketball Player of the Year, told CBS Sports. “Being a part of the Gatorade family with so many iconic names is really cool and something that I never thought I would do, but here we are. I’m super pumped.”
Bueckers was the first college athlete, not just basketball player, to sign an NIL deal with Gatorade in 2021. Clark, now in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, joined in December 2023 when she still played for Iowa. Some Gatorade athletes who signed as…
