TGIF is especially significant today because name, image, and likeness rights for college athletes are officially a year old! In honor of the historic landmark, here are four key benefits of NIL for college athletes.

Business Skills

Although the immediate payout of NIL is cash in hand, the long-term benefits of NIL could be even more significant for college athletes. By stepping in the NIL space, college athletes now have the opportunity to learn important skills like marketing, branding, and promotion, while expanding their professional network.

Academics

Although there was widespread speculation that NIL would distract college athletes from their academics leading up for July 1^st of last year, there is also a lot of potential for NIL to help athletes with academics. Not only can NIL teach athletes the aforementioned lessons they might not learn outside of a business classroom, but NIL can also help athletes pay for things like school supplies, technology, conference travel, and gaps in their financial aid (not to mention basic necessities like groceries and gas).

Fostering Creativity

NIL offers college athletes ways to be creative. Since NIL rights were expanded to college athletes, more creative athletes like Marshall offensive lineman/country singer, Will Ulmer and SMU defensive back/painter RaSun Kazadi have profited from their artistic skills. Other athletes have gotten creative in a business sense—take the Kansas State football team for example. This summer, they have teamed up together and formed an NIL club in the making that will offer private meet-and-greets, interviews, and other exclusive content for a membership fee.

Gender Equity

Contrary to what NIL critics were saying prior to July 1^st of last year, NIL is not a Title IX violation—in fact, it's the exact opposite. NIL is arguably the best development for female college athletes since Title IX. Although female athletes earn less than high-profile male college football players on average, they are still crushing it in the NIL space.

Female basketball players in particular, have been doing well. According to Opendorse, these athletes are the second highest earners on the platform behind only football players, and four of the top five earners from this past season's March Madness were women. Not to mention, if female athletes want to pay for graduate school, start a business, or invest their NIL earnings, having access to the NIL marketspace in college can help empower them financially long after graduation.

One year in and it's clear that NIL has been an overwhelmingly positive force for college athletes. We look forward to many more!

Katie (M.K.) Lever is a former Division 1 athlete and current doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin where she studies NCAA discourse and policy. She is also a freelance sportswriter and creative writer on the side. She is the author of a new book Surviving the Second Tier available on AMAZON. Follow Katie  on  Twitter and Instagram: @leverfever.

* Originally published on July 1, 2022, by Katie Lever, Ph. D