CHARLOTTE — If you were scrolling through Instagram on Monday morning, you may have noticed a rather unusual post from UNC's Paxson Wojcik.
Instead of the graduate guard's typical basketball-related content, he was meticulously posed in front of a clean, white wall, sporting a matching black sweatsuit. Scroll down a little bit, and you discover the post is actually a Skims sponsorship — as evidenced by Wojcik's caption: "@kimkardashian (red heart emoji)"
Dig a little deeper, like any good investigator would, and you end up on the Skims Instagram page, or maybe even that of Kim Kardashian herself. Once there, the plot thickens. Wojcik is pictured on the cover of SLAM Magazine (in his Skims gear, of course) alongside several basketball standouts: Duke's Jared McCain, Arizona's Caleb Love, Kansas' Hunter Dickinson, Kentucky's Rob Dillingham and Connecticut's Donovan Clingan.
So how did Wojcik, who averages just over eight minutes per game, end up in such an all-star lineup? Well, apparently they just liked his look.
It all started when TJ Beisner, the NIL lead at UNC, approached Wojcik with the Skims pitch. Wojcik said he was aware of the brand, but had no idea that it made men's clothes, so he was confused at first. But after learning more about the NIL deal, he was all-in.
“[It was] definitely an opportunity that I was excited about once it was presented, and I’m not going to turn it down, but it was the first time I had done any sort of fashion industry photoshoot," he said.
The same cannot be said for every member on the team. Seth Trimble was a fairly prolific child model, starring in campaigns for Nike, Foot Locker, Kohl's and John Cena's merchandise line, among others.
