Ding! My phone chimes as I push open the door of the science building, exiting my fifth period chemistry class, my last of the day. I’m headed to the locker room to get changed into my running clothes before practice, and as I walk across campus, I swing my backpack around to grab my phone out of the front pocket. “You have four new notifications from while you were in quiet mode,” my phone reads. An alert from Instagram.
I open the colorful app, and an instant stream of stories and posts floods the screen. Albeit overwhelming for my psyche, this sensation is admittedly dopamine inducing, and I enjoy popping into my social apps after a long day at school to catch up on the day’s occurrences.
After checking my DMs and a couple of friends’ stories, I take a quick scroll through my feed, which, being the running nerd that I am, is overflowing with cross country and track news and memes. After skimming a graphic listing top indoor 5K times in the NCAA so far this season and laughing at a video on nocontextxctrack’s page, I stop cold at a CitiusMag post. “Breaking,” it reads. “Brooks has signed five new high school NIL athletes.”
Now, this is nothing new. I’ve seen countless pictures of athletes signing NIL deals on social media, fervently wishing I could be one of them. It seems as though not winning national titles and breaking state records is costing me paychecks and publicity from athleticwear, sports nutrition, and recovery technology companies alike. But this trend has also been accompanied by other major changes, particularly in the NCAA, among them new scholarship rules and roster limits.
It makes me wonder about what my future in athletics holds, and how different my path will be from those of athletes who competed a mere decade ago. The benefits and consequences of the shifts in the evolving NCAA landscape are still unknown, but both are inevitable; for all good things, there is a price to pay. And this is coming from my position as a female cross country runner, a sport that isn’t exactly considered lucrative — what do these changes mean for top football and basketball players in high school and college?
Well, we will get to that. But it requires a lot of explanation, so let’s start with something simpler: what even is NIL?
The easy answer to this loaded question is that NIL stands for name, image, and likeness. NIL first began in California, when on September 30, 2019, the state passed a bill that made it legal for college athletes to be paid for the use of their names, images, and likenesses, allowing them to make a living while immersed in the full time job that is being a collegiate athlete. Despite the NCAA’s conviction that this was harmful to college sports, by late 2019, over 20 states were passing legislation that permitted NIL, fueled by the valid belief that college athletes deserve to be compensated for the marketing and use of their personal brands.
Federal legislation finally addressed NIL in June 2021 when the Supreme Court ruled that amateur athletes could be paid, after decades of preventing them from making money before becoming professionals. For years, teams at universities were profiting off the backs of their student-athletes – for example, selling jerseys with their name on them, or signing huge TV contracts – and they were not being compensated accordingly.
Although it first originated as a fairly simplistic and positive way for college athletes to make money, use their social media accounts to benefit from their following, and represent different corporations and businesses, NIL has proven to be accompanied by a multitude of complexities, and is one of the game-changers that has dramatically altered the NCAA in the past few years.
There are two main types of NIL in college athletics: “pure” NIL, and collectives. In pure NIL, student-athletes find ways to benefit off of their brand as an individual. They utilize their social media accounts to engage in different communities, and subsequently profit from this by partnering with brands or drawing passive income from ads and impressions on their feeds.
Collectives, on the other hand, are a method that schools can utilize to pay their student-athletes. They are organizations of donors and supporters who come together to help a school pool funds to provide athletes with NIL opportunities, such as autograph signings or business endorsements. Collectives have especially proliferated in the Power 4 conferences, with schools that have massive football programs. Payments can total in the hundreds of thousands – in some cases millions – of dollars to students at certain universities.
NIL looks vastly different in the high school, junior college, and NCAA scene. Everyone at the college level can participate in NIL, but at the high school level, it isn’t allowed in every state.
In August 2021, California became the first state to allow high school NIL, and today, over 30 states have followed suit. In high school, a student-athlete cannot represent their school in relation to an NIL deal – the athlete and school must be kept completely separate. Recruiting in high school is also not permitted – athletes cannot be paid for attending a school.
Conversely, for many college recruits, NIL has become a priority in what they look for in a program, and they wonder what the school can do for them in terms of NIL opportunities. A major aspect of a collegiate athlete’s brand can revolve around the school that they compete for.
As a result of this, NIL has impacted the recruiting scene significantly. Critics of NIL argue that collectives can influence athletes to commit to transfer to another school because of prospective NIL opportunities there, which is far from NIL’s original goal of allowing athletes to profit from their existing popularity.
Another major concern with NIL is that there is a stark lack of framework within federal NIL legislation. More specifically, there is no set of clear guidelines in place for athletes to monetize their NIL. In June 2023, NCAA President Charlie Baker argued that this lack of rules could result in a disparity between compensation for athletes, the potential exploitation of student-athletes, and even the violation of amateurism rules that could sacrifice eligibility.
Despite the criticism it has received, NIL is incredibly beneficial for the student-athletes themselves. Attending to both academic as well as athletic obligations while attending college is a full-time job in and of itself, and many partial-scholarship or walk-on athletes struggle to become financially independent, falling into debt that haunts them for years after graduation.
NIL has the possibility of ameliorating this, helping student-athletes generate income in tandem with nurturing their pursuits in school and sports. In fact, NIL has the potential to be so life changing that student athletes who competed before the onset of NIL sued the NCAA for compensation since their collegiate careers ended shortly before they could have reaped its benefits. In the historic House vs NCAA settlement, the NCAA agreed to pay $2.75 billion to current and former players for the use of their NIL rights.
Other recently announced changes to the NCAA that will roll out in the 2025-2026 school year include new roster limits and lack of scholarship caps. There will no longer be a limit on the amount of scholarships that a team can offer to its athletes, eliminating sport-specific limits that existed previously.
This is accompanied by new roster limits specific to each sport that match or exceed current scholarship restrictions. Both have both benefits and drawbacks – many student-athletes may now miss out on opportunities to compete in the NCAA because of full rosters, but schools will have more flexibility in financially supporting their athletes.
Moreover, current student-athletes could potentially be cut from teams, but the number of scholarships for college sports may increase. The roster limits may also be good for community college athletics, as more athletes may opt to compete at the junior college level instead of in the NCAA due to fewer numbers on teams overall.
Much of this new information about the NCAA is relayed to the public through social media–a double edged sword for my generation of athletes and students.
In an era where we are all supposedly more intertwined than ever, I occasionally feel isolated in my fears about social media and its complexities. I know it is my own choice to be present online, and it’s a necessary one as I do hope to get into the NIL space myself one day. But the underlying pressure to be actively posting and marketing oneself honestly sometimes seems more like a curse than a blessing, especially since social media can often cause comparisons and low self-esteem.
I try to be the best athlete and the best student I can be. Regardless, there will always be someone who is better than me. But I try to create a presence on social media, curating a feed that accurately reflects my personality, values, and experiences. Of course, this reflection is one of a fun house mirror: it is warped in a way that makes my life seem perfect, when, in reality, it isn’t. Social media is just a highlight reel of one’s life, displayed on an aesthetically pleasing app paired with a cute profile picture.
Whether we like it or not, the world of athletics is changing. It is important to stay informed and up to date on the latest legislation and happenings within the NCAA and NIL world and consult sources and media outlets that you trust, especially as a student-athlete. Those rapid-fire changes could affect our lives significantly and influence decisions we make about our futures regarding our collegiate athletic careers.
Sources:
NIL Explained | What is NIL? What is Name Image Likeness? | Collectives Explained CleanKonnect
How the NIL market has shaken up college, high school sports | Nightline
Everything you need to know about the NCAA’s NIL debate | ESPN
New NCAA Scholarship and Roster Limits for the 2025-26 School Year | NCSA
