Caitlin Clark grabbed undergraduate sport’s leading performer honors, but it may have been Eric Oberman who felt like the evening’s biggest success.
On Wednesday in Cleveland, the Iowa sports star—to limited surprise—received her next subsequent Naismith honor, recognizing Clark as the children’s college participant of the year. Clark took the podium to accept her award, and she began her remarks by praising how “very great it” it was to witness the expansion of this particular award ceremony, which is now in its second year.
Oberman, the president of the Atlanta Tipoff Club, the little nonprofit that administers what are probably the most prominent quarterly awards for college and high school baseball players and coaches, found that to be true.

” It is great coverage for us, the survive- streaming, the cultural media—it has been incredible”, Oberman said in a phone interview later. To reveal an prize is one thing, but to hold an event like this and witness the turnout is something I would not have dreamed of three years ago.
The NCAA Final Fours men’s and women’s year each year marks ATOC’s harvest time.
” This is our Super Bowl, our Academy Awards—everything rolled into one”, Oberman said.
Although the Naismith College people honorees have been hosting an awards meal since 2009, this was only the next time that ATOC has hosted the people. In its first year, Oberman estimated that about 40 people attended the women’s college award banquet, this time around, about 300 people, including 19 credentialed media, jammed into the banquet area of a private, street- level club inside the Cleveland Browns Stadium.
The Phoenix Art Museum will hold its ceremony on Sunday, followed by live streaming from SiriusXM Radio. Finalists for Naismith male player of the year include North Carolina’s RJ Davis, Purdue’s Zach Edey, Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht and Houston’s Jamal Shead.
The Atlanta Tipoff Club currently confers 14 Naismith basketball honors, including both male and female winners, and Oberman thinks that’s sufficient.
” We do n’t want to grow for growth’s sake”, Oberman said. How many times have you witnessed a business try to explode before it fails to focus on its main task? I do n’t want 20 different Naismith awards”.
Instead, his most pressing long-term objective is to prevent corporate sponsors from sponsoring the three award categories. He claims that he had fruitful discussions with the representative of one business in Cleveland on Wednesday that he declined to name and that had expressed an interest in joining.
A group of Atlanta sports figures and business leaders first established The Tipoff Club in 1956 in an effort to celebrate high school basketball in the area.
In 1969, hoping to increase its national profile, ATOC began honoring the country’s top men’s college hoops player, naming its award in honor of James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, who had a relative who was then serving on the club’s board of directors.

UCLA’s Kareem Abdul- Jabbar, who then went by Lew Alcindor, was the award’s inaugural recipient.
Over the ensuing decades, ATOC has steadily added additional awards to its array: the women’s player of the year in 1983, college coach and boy’s and girl’s high school players in 1987, men’s and women’s college officials in 1988, boy’s and girls ‘ coach of the year in 2008, and, most recently, men’s and women’s college defensive player in 2018.
Most of ATOC’s revenue comes from contributions and award sponsors, which include Jersey Mike’s and Werner Ladder, who lend their names to the college player and coach trophies, respectively. The Club also hosts an annual golf tournament in September, and charges money for membership. The nonprofit brought in$ 730, 000 of revenue in 2022, according to its most recent tax filings, about a third which went to compensate Oberman, its lone employee.
Oberman repeatedly referred to ATOC—a 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) federal charity—as a” company”, which is also how it refers to itself on its tax filings.
Prior to ATOC, Oberman spent a number of years in corporate communications—for Nike, public relations firm Ketchum and Home Depot, which originally brought him to the Atlanta area.
Oberman left the Atlanta Sports Council in 2007 to become vice president of business properties, the civic organization tasked with bringing important sporting events to the area and who had recently assumed management of the Tipoff Club.
” I was n’t all that schooled in the nonprofit world, and you learn quickly how to grow, and it is not always the easiest, because you are constantly seeking revenue”, Oberman said.
In 2010, he became ATOC’s executive director, and four years later, the club broke off as its own entity, in what Oberman said was a mutual and amicable decision.
” If you look at the model of both organizations”, Oberman said,” they really did not go hand- in- hand”.
For Oberman, going alone was a double- edged sword.
” All of a sudden, you are your own boss—the only employee of a company”, he said. ” The flip side is I had no staff and no sponsors”.
A year and a half later, in 2016, ATOC secured its first significant sponsorship from Werner Ladder, who had already established itself as the NCAA’s official ladder. The club’s current partnership with Werner runs until 2026. Jersey Mike signed on to sponsor the Naismith High School Player Awards in 2018, and in 2020, he also agreed to sponsor the college Player Trophy. The organization began revising its bylaws in the same year, establishing more structure for its board, and “having the terms be a little more clearly laid out and governed”
Oberman claims that ATOC is also “kicking around” the idea of finding a national broadcast partner to promote the Naismith Awards year-round.
” We get a lot of organic media coverage, but do n’t have an actual broadcast partner”, he said.
Oberman acknowledged that the Tipoff Club was “late to the game on social media,” and that Naismith’s social media accounts are projected to generate more than 35 million impressions this year, up from around a million in 2017. ( ATOC uses unpaid college interns to create the majority of its social media content year-round. )
While one of its most disruptive times in history is being experienced by the college athletics industry, Oberman claimed neither NIL nor the transfer portal have yet to have had a significant impact on his life. The honor of what athletes achieve on the court does not seem to have diminished as a result of the attention on what athletes earn off the court.
Given the limits to his organization’s bandwidth, and the already- condensed schedule between the men’s and women’s Final Fours, Oberman says he is not sure if there is much else ATOC can do to make hay in early April. Though opportunities abound, the Atlanta Tipoff Club remains just a one- employee organization.
” I just want to grow things in an efficient, smart manner”, Oberman said. ” I’ve been around long enough to avoid getting too excited and boiling the ocean.”