Weekly Column: NIL Has Left Compliance Behind

In this week’s column, California Sports Lawyer® CEO and Managing Attorney Jeremy M. Evans writes about the concerns and solutions around name, image, and likeness (NIL) in college athletics.

Name, image, and likeness (NIL), in its infancy, was premised on a clear distinction: off-the-field, market-driven revenue negotiated by student-athlete representatives (attorneys and agents), not school-managed compensation.

You can read the full column below. (Past columns can be found, here).

Name, image, and likeness (NIL), in its infancy, was premised on a clear distinction: off-the-field, market-driven revenue negotiated by student-athlete representatives (attorneys and agents), not school-managed compensation. The NCAA, through its member institutions—universities, colleges, and schools—and state legislation were supposed to permit NIL activity, not administer, structure, or enforce it. Compliance existed to keep institutions out of the economic relationship between athletes and money, not to serve as a conduit for relationships, financial delivery, or to act as agents and managers.

That original premise of NIL no longer exists in Power 4 conferences or money-making college sports. This raises the question of how and why NIL evolved in the opposite direction of its original intent. NIL was designed to give athletes more freedom from institutions, not more institutional control over athletes’ futures. It was also meant to relieve pressure on institutions facing calls for pay-for-play.

Initially, collectives blurred the line between independence and institutional influence. Schools deferred to collectives as separate—yet beneficial—entities. Over time, schools began approving contract terms, coordinating deals, and increasingly asserting enforcement rights to keep athletes tied to the university athletic department and team. NIL was designed as a private market, but it now functions as a school-adjacent economic system. Once institutions stepped into NIL management, compliance became the wrong framework.

As NIL shifted from free-market capitalism to a controlled market system, incentives and athlete behavior changed. Older athletes are staying in school, pursuing graduate degrees, or delaying graduation to maximize NIL income. Obtaining more education should be applauded, but at what point is education being leveraged to benefit NIL budgets? And at what point does safety become a concern when 25-year-olds compete against 19-year-olds in college sports? NIL is no longer incidental to participation—it is often the reason to remain enrolled.

Multi-year economic relationships are now being formed in a system built for temporary participation. The point is not to say this evolution is wrong, but rather to acknowledge that college sports have fundamentally changed because of NIL. Perhaps a new system is needed—one that better reflects and protects brands, investors, athletes, coaches, and universities. Compliance systems were never designed for long-term revenue management. The question is whether they can be redesigned to serve that purpose.

Mobility is now colliding with compliance enforcement. Roughly half of men’s basketball players enter the transfer portal annually. The more frequently an athlete transfers, the less likely they are to graduate and earn a degree. Touchdowns and points become more important than grades—and who can blame athletes for prioritizing compensation when the system rewards them for doing so?

Transfer portal decisions are now inseparable from NIL economics and contracts. NIL agreements increasingly include—and arguably should include, to protect athlete investments—exclusivity clauses, claw-back provisions, and financial consequences tied to transferring. Duke University’s lawsuit against former quarterback Darian Mensah and the University of Georgia’s lawsuit against former linebacker Damon Wilson II—both seeking to enforce contract rights involving financial benefits, intellectual property, tort claims, and more—illustrate the growing scope of NIL disputes.

Institutional volatility also fuels the Wild West nature of college sports. Coaches are leaving as frequently as athletes. NIL agreements often outlive the staff and recruiters who negotiated them, leaving athletes and universities bound to economic terms never envisioned if the athlete were no longer playing for the team—or at all. Compliance depends on continuity, while NIL operates amid constant churn.

Litigation now focuses on contract interpretation, tortious interference, governance failures, employment-law undertones, investment terms, liability, and insurance. Courts and contracts—not conferences or the NCAA—are defining what NIL is and what it means. NIL has succeeded in paying athletes while they are in school, but it has failed in institutional control. That failure stems from a market-based concept being absorbed into institutional management. Once schools began controlling NIL economics, contractual and antitrust litigation became inevitable. Compliance was never meant to govern this system; it was meant to prevent schools from becoming involved in it.

It was not enough to leave well enough alone. Schools and conferences could not resist the urge to control the influx of athlete compensation to maintain competitive advantages. That decision has led to immediate success for some programs, and confusion, apathy, and indifference for others—an understandable outcome in a competitive environment. That same decision is also why contracts will become more restrictive, negotiations more adversarial, and litigation more likely, absent a fair and uniform set of rules beyond the minimum requirements of the House settlement.

College athletics must acknowledge that NIL is no longer an incidental benefit—it is an economic system. If institutions insist on managing NIL, compliance must be replaced or supplemented with a governance model designed for long-term commercial relationships. That requires standardized contracts, clear mobility rules, defined enforcement authority, and risk allocation that reflects economic reality. Continuing to force a market-driven system into a compliance framework built to avoid institutional involvement will only accelerate litigation and undermine the very stability schools claim to seek.

About Jeremy M. Evans:

Jeremy M. Evans is the Chief Entrepreneur Officer, Founder & Managing Attorney at California Sports Lawyer®, representing entertainment, media, and sports clients in contractual, intellectual property, and dealmaking matters. Evans is an award-winning attorney and industry leader based in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, California. He can be reached at Jeremy@CSLlegal.com. www.CSLlegal.com.