College sports are booming—and college athletes are earning like the pros. Five years after the NCAA opened the door to name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation, college athletes can earn money from their schools, donors, collectives, brands and their own audiences. But the NIL revolution isn’t fixing the one thing it was designed to: lack of fair payment for student-athletes.
The stakes of the NIL era trace back to O’Bannon v. NCAA, the landmark case that challenged the premise that student-athletes could generate commercial value for their schools while receiving nothing in compensation. The lawsuit ultimately established that the rules were subject to antitrust scrutiny, and the Ninth Circuit found the restrictions on athlete compensation too restrictive, opening the door for a system that allows student athletes to monetize themselves. When NIL rules changed in 2021, the initial promise was straightforward—student-athletes would finally be allowed to make money from their own identities.
