NIL Compliance

The transformative name, image, and likeness (“NIL”) era of college athletics is in its infancy yet one cannot overstate its impact on college athletics. While student-athletes have largely benefited from NCAA rules changes permitting their newfound ability to earn remuneration from their NIL, uncertainty exists regarding the rules and enforcement of them.<br><br>While the NCAA’s guidelines regulating student-athletes’ use of their NIL are minimalist, they contain some restrictions applicable to student-athletes, university staff members, universities, and universities’ athletics supporters. Despite repeated threats, the NCAA has yet to enforce its NIL restrictions, resulting in confusion and upheaval. NCAA legislation requires universities to monitor their compliance with all NCAA rules, however, and the NCAA will, at some point, enforce its NIL restrictions and penalize those who violate them. Thus, universities must monitor their compliance with NCAA NIL restrictions.<br><br>Scholars and the national media have written extensively about the NCAA’s NIL restrictions and their effects. Lacking from this discourse, however, is recognition and examination of universities’ responsibility to monitor compliance with the restrictions. This Article fills that void. To do so, Part I details the NCAA’s enforcement and infractions processes through which it enforces its myriad rules and explains universities’ efforts, including monitoring, to comply with NCAA rules on their campuses. Part II describes the NCAA’s NIL restrictions and suggests reasonable activities that universities should undertake to monitor compliance with them. Doing so would not only fulfill universities’ monitoring responsibilities but help foster compliance with NIL regulations on campuses.