1.Diverse Opportunities: College athletes are able to earn money through brand partnerships, endorsements, and social media promotion. This gives college athletes the ability to use their popularity to be able to make money based on their name, image and likeness. This permits the sale of custom jerseys, involvement within paid advertising, and even sports video games.
2. Ethical Considerations: Athletes must disclose their NIL deals and comply with NCAA guidelines to prevent under the table deals. It may seem easy to run wild and pay athletes as much as possible in order to keep them at their given school and the potential for under the table dealings. But schools and the athletes alike have to have full transparency within money that they may be paying or receiving.
3. Legal Considerations: Athletes may seek legal help to navigate their naming rights, contracts, and their intellectual property. There are additional concerns as it relates to the legality of paying college athletes given that many student athletes manage their NIL deals by themselves. There becomes a need for legal help whether that may be a representative at respective schools that help manage their student athletes or even private agents.
4. Educational Emphasis: It is very important for athletes to still prioritize their academics and not solely focus on making as much money as possible. While it is a great opportunity to see these athletes have their hard work pay off and to be compensated for the work they put in for their teams and schools, they still need to be able to put school first. This has become a blurred line with how students may be prioritizing their athletics over their school.
5. Future Landscape: The landscape of college athletics and NIL is evolving as schools are devoting more money to reward their student athletes. It will be interesting to monitor how the NIL scene grows in the coming years. With NIL becoming a factor within where athletes go to school based on how much money they can make will be something to look out for and potentially bring in more regulations on how much students should be allowed to make.
