Scholarship or Salary: The New Age of Amateur Athletics Pay for Play is Here

In the new age of social media, the power of name, image, and likeness (NIL) of a player has become a powerful chess piece in the amateur athletic game. Depending upon the state, NILs allow for students to make money off their own image.¹ This comes from the right of publicity, that allows a person to restrict the use of their own name, image, or likeness.² NILs also allow for these students to make a profit off of media that uses their name, image, or likeness.³ Some forms of NILs are photographs, merchandise, public speaking events, and affiliate or ambassador roles.⁴

As the House v. NCAA settlement decision waits in the distance, the discussion of whether student athletes are employees becomes more prevalent. A final approval hearing for the settlement is tenatively schedueld for April 7, 2025.⁵ The case of House v. NCAA has posed several questions regarding student-athletes being able to be paid, the issue of NIL’s being previously restricted by colleges, and the new ability to allow athletes to engage in their own NIL management.⁶ Overall, this decision would set historic precedent to allow students to be paid directly for their revenue as athletes for colleges while simultaneously being able to use their NIL for their benefit.⁷ If the final settlement is approved, there would be the ability to have direct revenue for student athletes, as well as $2.7 billion of retroactive payment for players who did not have the choice to earn compensation through their NIL.⁸

Amateur athletics is seeing a clear shift from treating athletes as only students to now potential employees. As this shift occurs, colleges have gotten ahead of the House v. NCAA final settlement decision by Judge Claudia Wilken by starting to implement contracts with payment and NIL language.⁹ These new deals could be implemented as early as Summer of 2025.¹⁰

Some of these contracts require athletes to assign their NIL rights to the school on the other side of the deal.¹¹ Schools are relying on contracts and lawyers to keep them up to date ahead of these new and changing “play for pay” rules.¹² It appears that some NILs can be used as a bargaining chip to acquire a high-level amateur player and on the other hand can be restricting for some athletes.

The new rules for amateur athletics remain unclear after the settlement of House v. NCAA, and has started to shift the perspective of amateur athletics to a “pay for play” system. Yet this raises questions: how will Title IX be factored into this? Will the majority of revenue gathered from amateur athletics be given back to the players, and, if so, then which ones under the new limits?

1. https://www.ncsasports.org/name-image-likeness ↩︎
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5. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5826004/2024/10/07/house-ncaa-settlement-approval-claudia-wilken/ ↩︎
6. Id. ↩︎
7. Id. ↩︎
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10. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/44107758/nil-ncaa-sec-college-contracts-name-image-likeness ↩︎
11. Id. ↩︎
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image credit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbaker/2023/11/20/looking-back-at-white-v-ncaa-for-reason-why-the-ncaa-should-settle-claims-in-house-v-ncaa/