When March goes mad, Jamie Mottram is ready.
As the president of Breaking T, Mottram leads a company that specializes in taking a moment and turning it into a licensed T-shirt within 24 hours.
When "Name, Image and Likeness" deals finally hit college licensing, Mottram was excited, but he knew how disorganized things were going to be.
Every time a play or catch phrase went viral in those early days of NIL, Mottram's team would begin its search to reach the player and earn the rights to market the athlete.
"We were doing a lot of scrambling in the moment," Mottram said. "Instagram DM was sometimes highly effective, sometimes ignored. Sometimes, we had to get on the phone with the player's parents and that worked some of the time."
Three years later, Mottram's team is much more organized.
Breaking T has deals with many schools already that give the company the rights to use the teams and the players with an already agreed-upon royalty structure. A couple years into the NIL world, the way Breaking T moves has become a matter of course.
The company — which is based in Washington and has outlets in the Bay Area, Long Beach, Calif., and Wilmington, N.C. — has agreements in place with most of the Wooden Award finalists for both men and women, except for a couple, including Duke men's star Cooper Flagg.
This year, a new wrinkle will be added as the NCAA has licensed its marks, including March Madness, to be used in conjunction with the licensing of athletes and schools. Starting with Selection Sunday, BreakingT will offer shirts that are licensed by player, school and the NCAA.
So how does Breaking T work?
After a massive moment happens, the product team identifies it and gives guidance to the designers. The on-staff designers take it from there, sometimes competing in a quick battle over the winning design — perhaps between a more realistic image and a caricature or cartoon.
From there come the approvals, where BreakingT staff calls or texts licensing partners to get an immediate nod. In some cases, that process takes mere minutes. Sometimes it's hours, but both sides very well know that every minute costs money.
"We know most people now, so it's easier," Mottram said, "but there are no guarantees."
The goal is to catch fans at the height of passion, when they are willing to spend the most.
In 2022, when No. 15 seed St. Peter's beat No. 2 Kentucky, Mottram's team was at first paralyzed.
"I never heard of St. Peters," Mottram said. "But we reached out to contracts at CLC, who put us in touch with St. Peters, and their licensing guy was fired up. We literally had the product up that night."
Sometimes, the most successful shirts of the tournament don't even involve a moment that happens while the clock is running.
Two years ago, a first-round game between Indiana and St. Mary's was stopped when the ball got stuck in the backboard.
Indiana cheerleader Cassidy Cerny, who was lifted up and able to dislodge the ball, got an NIL deal with BreakingT, which used announcer Andrew Catalon's phrase "The Cheerleader Saves The Day" on the shirt.
"It was one of our top sellers," Mottram said. "She was on the Today Show, and our shirt was on Apple News."
Indiana cheerleader Cassidy Cerny, who famously plucked the ball out during the game, has struck an name, image and likeness deal with @BreakingT.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 21, 2022
The shirt is inspired by announcer @AndrewCatalon’s call of the moment. pic.twitter.com/TvvDQC9xDk
It costs real money to license product and play by the rules. NIL royalty rates vary, but the total is usually between 20% and 35% of the sale. That means BreakingT pays around $10 in royalties to the schools and student-athletes for a $34 T-shirt.
Mottram says licensed shirts sell much better, but he also is surprised by how many high-profile companies still get away with bootlegs.
Breaking T's best selling shirt actually came in 2019, when Don Cherry of CBC's "Hockey Night In Canada" called the Carolina Hurricanes a "bunch of jerks" following a post-goal celebration against the Edmonton Oilers.
A licensed "Bunch of Jerks" shirt was done by Breaking T in less than a day.
"We sold more 'Bunch of Jerks' shirts than there are seats in the Hurricanes arena," Mottram said. "And that's just one of those examples of 'You never know.' That T-shirt for the Carolina Hurricanes at the beginning of the season goes viral."
One of the reasons Breaking T is so good at what it does is because of Mottram's background.
In his previous life, he managed social media for AOL, Yahoo and USA Today.
"It's muscle memory," Mottram said. "It's very similar skills, and we operate like a newsroom, but we react with merchandise rather than with content."
The tournament gives BreakingT a chance to put itself on a big stage and show how quickly the company can turn a moment into a viral product. However, Mottram says the key to success is to make sure quality takes precedence over quickness.
"While we want to go to market very quickly, the difference between liking and loving a shirt is how good it looks," Mottram said. "We want you to wear our shirts until they are faded."
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.