When lawmakers watched Michigan and Washington compete for the college football championship earlier this month, some had much bigger worries than which team would win: They feared the end of college sports as we know it.
College athletes have been able to receive compensation for the use of their names, images and likenesses — NIL, for short — since 2021, a right many members of Congress support and want to affirm in federal law. Three football seasons into this new era, though, a frenzied and lucrative NIL environment has emerged — and Congress appears no closer to consensus on how to regulate it.
“The purchasing of players has set college athletics on an unsustainable path,” said Florida Republican Gus Bilirakis at a House hearing last week, calling the student-athlete industry a “Wild West.”