Getty Image
On Monday, popular golf influencer Paige Spiranac blasted critics of female athletes who are making big money these days by “showing off their bodies.”
Spiranac addressed the topic in a video which went viral because of a recent New York Times article which focused on female college athletes like LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne and the Cavinder twins, Haley and Hanna, who play basketball for the University of Miami.
Spiranac’s argument was pretty airtight and even without her help, athletes like Olivia Dunne and the Cavinder twins have no interest in slowing down when it comes to raking in NIL money by using their good looks to their advantage.
Related: Paige Spiranac Dumps On The USMNT World Cup Shirts, While Not Wearing A Shirt
Dunne, 20, currently ranks as the highest earning female athlete in the country with a NIL valuation of $2.5 million, followed by Auburn gymnast Sunisa Lee and Connecticut basketball star Paige Bueckers.
Coming in at fourth and fifth respectively on the list are the Cavinder twins, Haley and Hanna. Combined, the twins have a NIL valuation of over $1.6 million, or $100,000 more than second on the list Sunisa Lee.
“Maybe no two athletes have defined the NIL era more than the Cavinder Twins,” on3.com writes about the basketball stars.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck9RYeIgjpe/?hl=en
The Cavinder twins, Haley and Hanna, have partnered with more than 40 brands, thanks to the NIL rules
Interestingly, two days after the hand-wringing New York Times piece titled “New Endorsements for College Athletes Resurface an Old Concern: Sex Sells,” The Athletic published a very different profile on the 21-year-old Cavinder twins.
In three seasons of college basketball, the Cavinder twins have 3,040 points, 1,009 rebounds, 722 assists, five appearances on various all-league teams and one conference player of the year award between them. They have zero NCAA Tournament appearances — though they’d argue a 25-win Fresno State team had a shot at an at-large invite in 2020, before the world fell apart — and they transferred to Miami for the 2022-23 season to remedy that. They’ve gone from passed over as 5-foot-6 prospects to, in theory, two pieces a major-conference program needs to cause a stir in March. Their ability and ambition are real.
The Cavinders also have 4.1 million followers on TikTok. They have 990,000 followers across three Instagram accounts, 221,000 combined on Snapchat, 79,000-plus on their YouTube channel and another 23,000-plus combined on Twitter. At last count, thanks to the wild new world of Name, Image and Likeness freedom, they’ve executed partnerships with more than 40 brands, from Champs Sports to Campbell Soup, from The Cheesecake Factory to the WWE. Their Boost Mobile deal got them on a billboard in Times Square. In July, Forbes reported the twins had, in sum, $1.7 million worth of NIL deals.
“Just because they took their opportunities with NIL, that doesn’t mean their primary focus isn’t basketball,” said Miami guard Karla Erjavec. “That’s where people have to switch up their perspective. When we were recruiting them, I talked to them and the only thing they talked about was basketball. They just want to win.”
“They’re good basketball players. Like, it is fun to talk basketball with them,” added Miami head coach Katie Meier.
Don’t be surprised if some day you see them in the WNBA, or even WWE. Seriously. They could be the next Bella Twins. They already have an appointment to visit the WWE Performance Center after the basketball season.
“We see high-potential talent, and we’ve expressed that to them,” said James Kimball, WWE’s senior vice president/head of talent strategy.
For now though, they’ll keep raking in the NIL money, playing good basketball, and working on their new podcast Twin Talk which debuts on Dec. 8.
Their first guest? Olivia Dunne.