The milestone went almost unnoticed on Wednesday, surprisingly so, given the massive ramifications of this historic event. July 1, 2026, marked the five-year anniversary of name, image and likeness in college sports.<\/p>\n
Oh, how quaint July 1, 2021, seems now.<\/p>\n
At the stroke of midnight, college athletes could, for the first time in history, accept paid endorsement deals. TikTok stars Hanna and Haley Cavinder \u2014 twin sisters on Fresno State\u2019s basketball team \u2014 made the first big splash with a Times Square digital billboard ad for Boost Mobile.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a Sports Illustrated headline<\/a> declared that Miami quarterback D\u2019Eriq King was \u201ckick(ing) off NIL Era with a big payday,\u201d from deals with several local companies that, the story revealed, \u201cshould net him more than $20,000.\u201d<\/p>\n Five years later, there are college quarterbacks making more than $5 million.<\/p>\n Love it or hate it, NIL became something entirely different than what anyone in college sports envisioned five years ago, back when NCAA members begrudgingly bowed to years-long pressure from antitrust lawsuits, state legislatures and congressmen.<\/p>\n In its annual report last month, NIL firm Opendorse projected that total spending across the industry will reach $4.5 billion this year when counting schools\u2019 direct payments to athletes (which began last year), athletes\u2019 own brand deals and paid social media posts, and sales of consumer products that license those athletes\u2019 rights (jerseys, trading cards, EA Sports video games, etc.).<\/p>\n The average Power 4 school\u2019s athletes are making a combined $34.8 million.<\/p>\n Hard to believe it was once headline news that Texas\u2019s offensive linemen were getting paid $50,000 to do charity appearances.<\/p>\n With a dozen-plus states\u2019 NIL bills set to take effect on July 1, 2021, the NCAA officially lifted its longstanding ban on athletes monetizing their NIL rights. The primary beneficiaries figured to be social media-savvy athletes like then-LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne, whom brands would pay to advertise products to their many followers. And that absolutely happened.<\/p>\n But leaders failed to account for a fundamental component of big-time college athletics: the desperation to win championships. It only took a couple of months for boosters at early adopters like Texas A&M and Tennessee to figure out they could pay recruits to come play for their schools by pooling their money, cleverly wording their \u201cNIL\u201d contracts to stay 10 steps ahead of NCAA investigators.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been off to the races ever since.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen 4.5X growth in five years \u2014 and it\u2019s accelerating, not slowing,\u201d Opendorse founder Blake Lawrence told The Athletic. \u201cWe knew athletes were going to get paid; we just didn\u2019t know who was going to pay them. And the answer turned out to be everyone \u2014 brands, donors, and now the schools themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that the NCAA, under former president Mark Emmert, basically wrote its own obituary by spending years fecklessly fighting the inevitable. Former UCLA basketball star Ed O\u2019Bannon, upset at seeing his likeness used in the old EA Sports basketball game without any compensation, first filed his landmark antitrust suit in 2009<\/a>. Emmert and the membership spent a dozen years mounting its 1950s-era defense of amateurism, all the while watching their TV deals soar by billions and their own salaries soar by millions.<\/p>\n Even at the very end, when Emmert himself had already raised the white flag and urged his members to modernize, the thousands of schools he served could not reach consensus on any sort of comprehensive NIL regulations. The only two things they agreed on are that the deals can\u2019t be pay-for-play and the schools themselves can\u2019t be involved.<\/p>\n But of course, NIL became a free-for-all specifically because the schools couldn\u2019t be involved.<\/p>\n Looking back, the turning point came in March 2022, when The Athletic reported that then-high school junior Nico Iamaleava<\/a>, a five-star quarterback from California, had signed a four-year, $8 million contract with Spyre Sports, the nascent collective\/marketing agency promoting Tennessee athletics. No one had heard of such a thing. And to be fair, Iamaleava\u2019s $2 million annual figure remained a unicorn for at least a couple of years. (Today, at least a half-dozen QBs make nearly three times that.)<\/p>\n Not only did NCAA enforcement fail to stamp out Tennessee\u2019s brazen pay-for-play deal, but that state\u2019s attorney general later won an injunction that neutered the NCAA\u2019s ability to crack down on booster deals entirely. But even if that had never happened, chances are, nothing would have changed.<\/p>\n Boosters have been trying to buy championships for their schools since practically the dawn of football. NIL just made it easier for them to have cover. Nico\u2019s deal, and all the others that came after it, are essentially the same thing that got SMU the \u201cDeath Penalty\u201d<\/a> 40 years ago, only with much larger numbers and legally binding contracts.<\/p>\n How was anyone ever going to corral a bunch of fierce competitors who stage an endless duel to out-recruit each other for talent?<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s House settlement, which finally allowed schools to pay their athletes directly, was billed as a mechanism to rein in the chaos. Schools would need to stay within a cap, and athletes would need to get their third-party deals approved by a clearinghouse.<\/p>\n