top of page
Search

The College Sports Landscape in 2025: Power, Profit, and NIL

Something that I never had the chance to experience and take advantage of as a collegiate athlete was making money off of my Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Those three letters didn’t even exist, and The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibited athletes from making money off of their sports performance and status as a college athlete. For years athletes have tried to advocate for their rights to compensation, but the NCAA stood strong until July 1, 2021 when the NCAA changed their stance on the topic. The inclusion of NIL still prohibits schools from paying athletes directly, but it does allow athletes to get paid from other avenues (like brand deals and promotional appearances) related to their student-athlete status (Icon Source, 2022). While this is a huge step forward for college athletics, it brings with it a host of anticipated and unforeseen challenges. This paper will give background to the timeline and evolution of NIL, discuss specific examples of the legal and financial implications that come from the decision, as well as cover the evolving landscape of college athletics.


For the first 50 years of intercollegiate athletics there were no regulations on paying student-athletes. There wasn’t even a governing body to regulate the payment of said student-athletes. That all started to change in 1905 when President Theodore Rosevelt helped create the NCAA, where the organization made its stance against the payment of student-athletes (National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 2021) in an effort to establish their amateur status. However, the NCAA has never done a good job at defining what it means to be an “amateur athlete”, and that is something the Supreme Court pointed out in their 2021 lawsuit. National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, (2021) stated the following “nowhere define[s] the nature of the amateurism they claim consumers insist upon.” In the years since the founding of the NCAA, the rules and regulations have expanded and become more detailed in what is allowed and what is not in an effort to keep professional athletes out of amateur college sports. While there was still financial support for student-athletes (scholarships and awards for example) it was the schools and the NCAA itself who truly benefited the most from these laws. A quick Google search will show you that the NCAA brought in $1.3 billion in 2024. That’s a lot of money going into the pockets of those trying to keep student-athletes from being paid. Many athletes have voiced their displeasure over the years, but it was former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon and 19 others who got the ball rolling by winning a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA in 2015, where they argued student-athletes deserved to be compensated for their appearances in video games (Icon Source, 2022). This marked a pivotal shift in how the world and the NCAA viewed college athletics.


Upon the passage of NIL, some athletes were quick to partner with an agency or agent to represent them in regards to monetizing their NIL by developing brand deals. Some athletes are not as fortunate to be in a position to work directly with an agent(cy), making it harder for them to get brand deals and make sure they are legit so they don’t commit an NCAA violation. To add to the messiness of implementing NIL into college athletics, each state has their own rules and regulations that athletes and educational institutions are required to follow. And if the state has no such laws, it is up to the school to create their own system (Icon Source, 2022). That can be a lot for a student and athletic administration to keep up with. This created a unique opportunity for a company like Icon Source and organizations like the Ohio NIL Exchange to essentially become a mediator for athletes, agents and agencies, and athletic departments. Icon Source was founded in 2018 as a place for professional athletes and brands to connect, putting them in a position to facilitate the deal between the Cavinder sisters and Boost Mobile just hours after the NCAA changed its stance on NIL (Icon Source, 2022). Ohio University created the Ohio NIL Exchange, a program designed for interested athletes and brands to safely and legally connect with each other (Ohio University, 2024). Resources like this are going to be extremely important for students and universities to utilize going forward. Not only do both provide a platform for schools, brands and student-athletes to connect, but they also are a safeguard for compliance. The NCAA has recommended that institutions place a high priority on compliance monitoring due to the complex nature of the varying rules and regulations. Using systems like the ones mentioned above simplifies the administrative process and makes it safer for student-athletes to enter contracts without the fear of committing NCAA violations and dealing with the repercussions.


Many arguments against NIL are that it is unfair to smaller universities and student-athletes with less support to benefit from the new system. Resources like Icon Source and the Ohio NIL Exchange can level the playing field for these individuals and schools. With so much money and opportunities up for grabs, it really comes down to the person and the effort they put into building these relationships with brands and how to monetize that. While it may not be fair and some people will have to work harder than others, as long as students are aware of the resources they have available to them they all have the same chance to prosper from NIL. What about larger schools where finances aren’t an issue? Because it’s already established that college sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. Larger institutions are taking advantage of the NCAAs loose rules and regulations and boosters are forming collectives, made up of alumni and boosters, with the goal of pooling together money to be used to pay athletes (Lens, 2023). These collectives are seen as creating an unfair recruiting and retention environment, favoring larger institutions with financial backing from alumni. Is it really unfair though? One could argue that these collectives can provide more opportunities for student-athletes who might not have been able to afford going to a larger institution, or any school at all to acquire a higher education. For some student-athletes, it used to be whoever would take them they would play for. Now, with the possibility of NIL deals and payments from collectives, those same student-athletes have more power and say in where they want to attend school and who they want to play for.


It might seem unfair that bigger schools can “buy” student-athletes, but like professional sports, there are many reasons why someone decides to attend a certain school and play for a certain team. Believe it or not it’s not always about the money, but the money doesn’t hurt. There have been instances of collectives distributing $3-5 million to student-athletes for attending their schools and participating in their football and basketball programs (Lens, 2023). An argument can be made for implementing a cap on how much money these collectives can raise and pay out to student-athletes in specific programs. Similar to professional sports, salary caps are an effort to avoid programs from stacking their teams with top prospects. This would help spread out the talent pool and keep the leagues competitive. It would also help continue to fund all the sports a school has to offer versus just a few popular ones. Since these collectives are associated with the school and seen as boosters, there may need to be more guidelines as to how that money is distributed amongst the teams. In the past, smaller, less mainstream sports have been underfunded compared to more popular sports. This was already an ongoing issue, and the addition of collectives doling out even more resources to these popular programs will only widen the discrepancy. I’m not sure though how big of a discrepancy it will be though. These underfunded teams now have opportunities that they haven’t had in the past. They can form their own alumni boosters and student-athletes can bring in income that they haven’t been able to in the past. And who’s to say that schools can’t reallocate their funding to even out what the collectives are paying for?


This new era of NIL is exciting for those who stand to benefit from it (student-athletes, big universities, and brands looking for partnerships) and daunting for those who might struggle because of it (smaller universities in particular). It looks like college athletics is headed to be run more like a professional sport organization than an educational system where students can also play sports. In that case, athletic administrations might stand to benefit from treating college commitments more like professional contracts. This will include negotiating external/promotional commitments, limitations on communication with competing entities, and possibly even placing a timeframe on how long the student-athlete must stay at the current institution before entering the transfer portal. At this moment, there is a lot of grey area in the verbiage of the NCAAs rules and regulations regarding NIL, and a lack of consistency across state legislatures (Icon Source, 2022). This has the potential to lead to more unintentional violations, unnecessary lawsuits, and the expansion of inequity between sports and institutions. One way to avoid such complications is for the NCAA and the rest of the country to get on the same page by all adopting the same rules, regulations, laws, and consequences concerning all things NIL. Having a consistent stance will make things much less confusing for all parties involved. One thing I think we can all agree on is that the NCAA needs to take control. If they want to keep education and amateurism at the foundation of what it means to be a student-athlete, they must put laws in place to support that stance. I do believe that student-athletes deserve to make a profit off of their NIL, and I do believe that the rules and regulations put in place can protect and benefit all parties involved.


References

Harthun, B. (2025a, January 9). Student-Athletes or Athlete-Students? The Economics of Collegiate Athletics in the NIL Era. Equilibrium. https://equilibriumecon.wisc.edu/2025/01/09/student-athletes-or-athlete-students-the-economics-of-collegiate-athletics-in-the-nil-era/ 



Lens, J. (2023). NIL Compliance. Law Review NIL Compliance Comments. https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/2023/04/17/nil-compliance/ 


National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. ___ (2021). Retrieved from Justia Supreme Court Center


Ohio University. (2024, November 21). NIL In College Sports: The New Playbook for Sports Administrators. The Evolving Role of Sports Administrators with the NIL in College Sports. https://www.ohio.edu/business/academics/graduate/professional-master-sports-administration/resources/nil-college-sports 


University of Maine Athletics. (2024, April 4). Maine Athletics Launches NIL Marketplace With Icon Source. https://goblackbears.com/news/2024/4/4/general-maine-athletics-launches-nil-marketplace-with-icon-source.aspx

 
 
 

Comments

Ownership - Leadership - Education

bottom of page