Universities must not only focus on their own Title IX compliance obligations to provide male and female athletes with equal participation opportunities, athletics scholarship support, and equal treatment and benefits (including promotion, publicity, and recruiting), they must also require the third parties they establish, control, assist, or benefit from — conferences, national governing organizations, businesses, booster clubs and NIL collectives — to do likewise. With specific regard to the support of college athletes’ NIL agreements, institutions and these third parties must provide equal opportunities for male and female athletes to obtain NIL agreements (recognizing that the value of such agreements will be subject to the marketplace). Institutions cannot use third parties as a subterfuge to evade their Title IX legal obligations.
