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Current Landscape of NIL Contracts Under NCAA Policy 

By Phil Petrina
June 01, 2023

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce has held the first U.S. Congressional hearing on name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts in collegiate athletics since the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) adopted its Interim NIL policy in July 2021. That policy marked a dramatic shift in NCAA protocol and, for the first time, allowed student athletes the opportunity to profit from the commercialization of their name, image and likeness. In other words, under the new policy, student athletes could enter into endorsement deals.

Since then, most major colleges and universities and college athletic conferences have adopted NIL compliance policies and procedures of their own for student-athletes, coaches and other institution staff to comply with. On top of the broad NCAA Interim NIL policy and subsequent institution and conference level compliance rules, 32 states have passed their own, preemptive legislation to regulate NIL deals that student athletes are making within their respective state borders. All of this has left interested stakeholders from the student athletes themselves to coaches, administrators, boosters, and interested businesses and investors with a whirlwind of cross-border legislation and compliance policies to grapple with.

All of this set the stage for the U.S. Congressional hearing on the matter at which the overarching, bi-partisan theme appeared to be that a federal preemptive standard on NIL is now necessary to provide clear and consistent guidelines that are fair and transparent while simultaneously protecting student athletes and the integrity of college athletics.

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