By Annika Duneja
When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) in 2021, people knew things in the sports world were going to change. They just had no idea how they were going to change.
First came the already-established influencers like Olivia Dunne, a gymnast at Louisiana State University who made millions of dollars with paid promotions and social media content the second she was allowed to make money.
Then came the bona fide stars, people like Caitlin Clark who were destined for the WNBA, and for whom brands like Gatorade and Nike jumped on board with the first chance they got.
Then, it was a free-for-all. Sponsorships and checks for any athlete with a social media account – but only if they could figure out how to market themselves in the first place.
Now, five years later, colleges – and a whole wave of new athletes – are starting to catch up.
Jake Dailey, a sophomore wrestler at UNC-Chapel Hill, has been ahead of the curve. He started posting on social media his freshman year of high school. His first viral video came his junior year: a video of him running in slow motion, Baywatch-style.
“At first people called it cringe and stuff but doing that cringe stuff eventually paid off for me and I started making money off of it, kind of just catching the new trends that are coming in, or taking a viral trending sound, and putting my own little spin on it, and kind of just hooking the audience in,” he said.
When Dailey got to UNC-CH, he began working with Article 41, a talent agency based in Chapel Hill founded by UNC-CH alumna Vicky Segar that helps connect athletes with brands for NIL opportunities. Instead of functioning like a traditional sports agency that represents athletes, Article 41 acts as a liaison to facilitate NIL deals.
While Article 41 does not have an official relationship or contract with UNC, agency representatives have met with many of the teams on campus and explained how they can monetize their skills and popularity.
Several UNC athletes have signed agreements with Article 41 and have made money from deals they’ve worked out in multiple ways.
Safi Hampton, a junior UNC volleyball player, began working with the company her freshman year. For her, the process usually involves being sent a script and filming a promotional video, being sent merchandise, or being sent merchandise that she has to then post about.
She said the agents will ask her about what drinks she likes, what she does in her free time, what she wears, and then connect her with brands.
“I’ve gotten deals with this brand called Oofos,” she said. “They sent me some shoes. All I had to do was post them on Instagram. A DripDrop ad, I got paid like, two and a half grand to just post a video.”
At UNC, Associate Athletics Director Nate Wood is helping students work out how to stay within NIL regulations while maximizing its benefits. According to Wood, about 20 percent of student-athletes actively want to engage in NIL and put effort into making money from brand deals.
“We certainly want to provide them the resources,” he said. “But like a lot of things, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. So we try to provide those opportunities for student-athletes, but we don’t force them in any way to be part of the NIL world if they don’t want to.”
Each student will engage differently with NIL, as some will go on to be professional athletes who will continue to get brand deals and make money from their sports.
Some may continue on to be general influencers who create a career out of social media.
For Hampton, it will most likely just stay a part of her career as an athlete, however long that is, she said.
“I think once I’m done playing volleyball,” she said. “the NIL thing will have to go into a box in my closet and be done.”
Dan Levy, a sports agent who has worked with athletes like WNBA player Paige Bueckers and University of Nebraska volleyball player Harper Murray, said he thinks that in order for any athlete to make money, they have to invest in their social media.
“I think the biggest way for college athletes to unlock revenue is through their social media platforms,” he said. “So a lot of the true NIL comes with their influence via social. There’s some instances where merchandise is being sold with their name, image and likeness, or they actually have marketing, sales, but almost all of it’s tied back to their social.”
He also said that the best school programs are working to educate athletes on what they can and cannot do within the rules of NIL and to help them understand what opportunities are available to them.
At UNC, along with explaining the legal ins and outs of NIL to athletes, Wood works with UNC Athletics to develop strategies.
“Our strategy is that we want to be on the cutting edge of whatever we can do in the NIL space,” he said. “The problem is that the NIL space constantly changes. And so we could have a great strategy. And then the rules change. And so then we have to start from scratch again.”
For example, UNC’s NIL collective, which helps manage deals with athletes, has gone through multiple iterations since being started in 2022. It began as a nonprofit entity, which like collectives at many other schools, quickly raised issues with the IRS because of limitations on how they could spend money. Then, the collective became a for-profit entity, called Heels4Life, which took in money and paid it out to athletes for smaller NIL deals. Now, the collective is called Old Well Management, which is more of a marketing agency that facilitates deals.
Another limitation is that the school cannot guarantee how much money a player will make. Instead, Wood said, they can use phrases like “at least six figures of additional income” or “here’s the partners we’re going to work with.”
Now, with the NCAA debating a new five-for-five rule that gives athletes five years of eligibility to compete in five seasons, the school’s approach to NIL deals could change again.
“It’ll again change our strategy and how we recruit, how we recruit in the portal, how we recruit freshmen, how we spend our money, all of those things will change, even with something as benign as a five-for-five that doesn’t necessarily mean NIL,” Wood said. “Now we can write five-year deals. And so those fifth years, those transfers, they become more valuable in that context.”
Another factor in NIL is that it gives exposure to athletes and sports outside of the big revenue-sharing sports like football, basketball and baseball that have historically made money for their schools.
Revenue sharing means that sports that make money for schools can get a certain share of the money they make, which can then be paid back to the players. At UNC, the school has $20.5 million to distribute, with $13 million going to football, $7 million going to basketball, and $250,000 apiece to baseball and women’s basketball.
This means that even sports like UNC women’s soccer, which has won multiple NCAA titles and is consistently in contention for championships, don’t make any money.
For the sports that don’t draw in large audiences, athletes can use NIL to bring attention to their sport and bring more money into the sport as a whole.
With NIL, athletes can now make money simply based on their performance. UNC runner Makayla Paige, the women’s NCAA 800-meter champion in 2025, had no brand deals and wasn’t really on social media at the time. After her win, she received a multi-thousand-dollar deal from the shoe company Hoka.
From there, as she began posting more and gaining more followers, more companies started reaching out and gave her even more deals.
“Just because you’re not a revenue sport doesn’t mean your sport’s less legit, it doesn’t mean you’re less of an athlete,” Hampton said. “It doesn’t mean you have less of a following, because at the end of the day, it’s on an individual level. It’s about what you bring to the table, what your face can get you.”
There are also athletes who come to college as social media stars already, and who could bring more recognition to their teammates. Anna Frey, who started playing tennis at UNC this year, became famous at age 15 for her supposed likeness to Brock Purdy, the quarterback of the San Francisco ’49ers. Since then, she’s gained around 2.5 million followers on TikTok.
Now, Frey’s social media presence is a mix of trending videos and audios, tennis content and brand partnership posts.
“So she’s a really good tennis player, but she’s even a bigger social media star,” Wood said. “And so that was somebody that we could bring in here and we could have her as a good athlete on a great women’s tennis team, but we know that she’s going to bring other things to the table as well. She’s bringing in Wilson and she’s bringing Fila and she’s bringing all these other advertisers, which help them get exposure to our other student-athletes.”
The regulations around NIL and NIL collectives also change how schools can recruit athletes out of high school and how programs can effectively pay students to come play for them.
With all the different situations that athletes and schools are in, Levy said it creates a gray area where it’s hard to know where NIL starts and ends. As the NCAA adds more regulations, schools are also trying to find loopholes to draw in the best athletes.
Even five years in, no one knows what the NIL era will bring next, or what changes it will bring to the college sports landscape.
As of April 2026, Congress is holding hearings on the SCORE Act, which is meant to provide a framework for athlete compensation in the NCAA.
President Donald Trump also issued an executive order effective Aug. 1 that limits the number of times an athlete can transfer. Transfers have increased in recent years as athletes look to go to schools that will offer them more money, and as the NCAA itself is facing numerous lawsuits related to athlete eligibility and transfers.
“The rules change like every six months,” Levy said. “So it’s the Wild West, I think, where things are right now. Athletes and their representatives are just trying to maximize the opportunity as much as possible within the rules.”
