For more than a century, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) vigorously defended its core principle that student-athletes were amateurs who could not be paid for their performance.
That policy now lies in shambles — the result of seismic changes over the last five years — as college sports revenue has exploded, reaching close to $17.5 billion in Division I athletics in 2022.
The shift began in 2021, when athletes gained the right to profit from their names, images, and likenesses (NIL). It snowballed last year in a settlement that ended the NCAA’s long-standing prohibition on direct payments to players. Division I schools can now pay athletes directly, up to 22% of athletic revenue, amounting to $20.5 million per school during the 2025-26 academic year.
These changes, stunning in both their speed and scope, are the subject of an article co-authored by Minnesota Law Professor Matthew Bodie, Robins Kaplan Professor of Law, and Harvard Law School J.D. candidate Esdras Camacho. “Collegiate NIL Collectives: Context, Structure, and Future” appeared last year in Harvard Law School’s Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law.
“One good development from all this is that the players are getting money from the revenue they generate,” Bodie says. “It’s always been, to me, frustrating to see all this money looking for places to go.”
Especially, he says, when it goes to college coaches, who are often the highest-paid employees in a given state, or to stadium renovations and training facility upgrades.
“Most college athletes, even in sports like football and basketball, will not play in the pros,” Bodie says. “For the student who makes maybe an extra $10,000 a year doing some name, image, and likeness work, that’s meaningful.”
Under past practice, Bodie says, players effectively got paid through scholarships. “And this was carefully managed by the NCAA up until the dam broke.”
That break came when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that NCAA restrictions on some athlete benefits violated antitrust law. Facing additional potential liability, the NCAA then radically broke from tradition, allowing student-athletes to remain amateurs while receiving NIL payments. Those payments, however, could not come from schools or be tied to players’ performance.
NIL collectives formed seemingly overnight to close the gap between athletes and boosters and others eager to pay them. The collectives, third-party entities independent of schools, raise money from supporters and businesses seeking promotional tie-ins. They channel the money to athletes in exchange for their NIL rights and, as much as the NCAA would like to deny it, to compensate players for their play.
Even after the antitrust settlement last year in House v. NCAA, which allows schools to pay athletes directly for their NIL rights, Bodie sees future avenues for collectives.
“There might be a continuing role for collectives to the extent that they establish themselves as more of a nexus between a variety of stakeholders — students, faculty and staff, administrators and alumni, across the board,” Bodie says. “Rather than just the entity that pays athletes for playing at a particular school.”
Collectives should also work with the NCAA to make sure they don’t violate the organization’s rules and with other collectives to develop a code of conduct in this largely unregulated sphere.
“The most dangerous thing is that the collectives will be tempted to take advantage of athletes and make promises that they don’t intend to follow through on or capture name, image, and likeness rights for a longer period and prevent the athlete from using them if the athlete wants to transfer,” Bodie says.