Compensation of College Athletes Including Revenues Earned from Commercial Use of Their Names, Images, and Likenesses and Outside Employment

The media reports strongly expressed opinions of various NCAA, conference, and institutional athletics administrators who maintain that allowing athletes to exploit their own NILs could not be accommodated without causing profound negative changes in the nature of college sports. The Drake Group disagrees with these contentions. The Drake Group believes that national collegiate athletics governance organization control of athlete outside employment is overly restrictive and that university commercial exploitation of athlete NILs in conjunction with college athletic events can and should coexist with athletes’ rights to independently commercially exploit their own NILs prior to and during the four- or five-year period in which they are eligible for college athletic participation without disqualifying them from collegiate eligibility. This position paper proposes new rules that should and could govern previously impermissible outside employment and NIL licensing.

View the full Position Statement here – (PDF)