I. Introduction

Note: Our NIL LAWS TRACKER provides information on state NIL laws as of August 2023.

The “NIL era” has produced many false narratives. Chief among them is that state legislatures are working diligently to advance athletes' rights. However, a review of the state legislative landscape over the last forty years—including laws in the NIL era—demonstrates several resilient truths inconsistent with that narrative.

First, state laws on college sports have benefitted the NCAA, conferences, and institutions more than athletes.

Second, nearly all state laws regulating college sports—including those deemed “progressive”—are aligned to one degree or another with foundational NCAA principles such as amateurism, the student-athlete, and the collegiate model.

Third, a primary motivating factor for nearly all state regulation of college sports is to either gain or avoid losing a competitive advantage in the recruiting market (talent acquisition).

Fourth, state laws regulating college sports have served the NCAA’s interests in regulating market actors over whom the NCAA has no direct regulatory jurisdiction (e.g., agents, boosters, donors, and collectives).

This Tab explores the role of state regulation in college sports from the beginning of the perceived athlete-agent regulatory “crisis” in the 1980s to the current perceived regulatory “crisis” over name, image, and likeness. 

The range of significant state regulation in college sports may be conceptualized by dividing state laws into three “buckets” sitting along a continuum. 

In one bucket on one end of the continuum, we have the athlete-agent laws from the 1980s to the early 2000s. These laws completely deferred to NCAA values and regulatory authority and substantially limited athletes’ rights. These laws philosophically align with a seventy-year history of blind allegiance to the NCAA as the sole regulatory authority in college sports.

In a second bucket on the other end of the spectrum, we have revenue sharing proposals beginning in  2018 that strike at the heart of the NCAA’s conceptualization of amateurism. These bills are few and far between and have met substantial political resistance, even in California, perhaps the country’s most politically “progressive” state.

In a third bucket in the middle, we have state name, image, and likeness laws that struggle to reconcile a NIL “compensation” system with a regulatory and financial model built around the fundamental belief that college athletes cannot be paid.

The NCAA, Power 5, and the media have characterized NIL laws as a “patchwork,” suggesting chaos and unsustainable inconsistency in the terms and coverage of those laws. In fact, state NIL laws are strikingly similar and are heavily clustered towards the NCAA values bucket at the NCAA end of the continuum.

The true power of NCAA amateur mythology expresses itself in this middle space. An examination of state NIL regulation reveals that college sports decision-makers—including state lawmakers— are inexorably drawn back to foundational NCAA amateurism-based values and away from athletes’ rights.