Can your NIL still fill the bill?

Old NIL

Once upon a time, famous professional sports stars could cash in on their celebrity status by endorsing various products. They could make money, in short, by selling what is now termed NIL: name, image, and likeness.

But then the US Supreme Court ruled that college athletes could also sell their NIL. The thing about NIL, however, is that in traditional use, you had to be famous for anyone to want to buy it. A budding high school athlete who was being recruited would not be well known and thus would not have valuable NIL.

But the Court's ruling didn't say an athlete's NIL had to be commercially valuable, only that you could sell it. So colleges were able to get alumni donors to set up NIL collectives that would offer money - nominally for NIL - as a recruitment tool. In effect, NIL became a substitute for payment for student athletes. 

The recent House legal settlement was - at least in the interpretation of some - supposed to do away NIL use of that type and substitute revenue sharing. But there is a dispute about what that settlement actually means for such NIL. From Yahoo Sports: 

College sports leaders are in active negotiations with plaintiff attorneys over, perhaps, the most significant piece of the House settlement: whether to permit traditional booster collective deals to athletes. A resolution between the two sides could shape the future enforcement of college athletics’ new revenue-share concept by potentially upending the settlement agreement’s primary goal: to limit or reduce the role of school-affiliated name, image and likeness collectives — booster-backed entities that have paid millions to athletes over the past four years.

The NCAA and power conference officials are negotiating with House plaintiff attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, who, in a letter sent last week to the NCAA and conferences, accused them of violating terms of the settlement by denying certain NIL collective contracts they believe should be permissible...

Kessler’s letter targeted a memo sent to NCAA schools... from the College Sports Commission, the new enforcement entity designed to prevent what administrators describe as “phony” booster compensation to athletes. The CSC notified schools on Thursday it was denying dozens of NIL deals for not meeting the definition of a “valid business purpose,” many of those collective contracts with athletes. The memo explained that collectives, or any entity, whose sole existence is to raise money to pay college athletes does not meet the definition...

In the letter, Kessler writes that collectives should not be treated differently as other businesses. The letter requested that the power conferences — the creators and administrators of the CSC — retract the memo and, presumably, reinstate those NIL deals that were denied, or else attorneys will bring the matter to Judge Nathanael Cousins, the appointed magistrate in the settlement who has been appointed to resolve such disputes...

Full story at https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football/article/college-sports-leaders-house-settlement-attorneys-in-talks-over-whether-to-permit-booster-collective-deals-010341870.html.