The most important thing NIL has produced is not a brand deal, but the raising of a question not seriously considered before in college sports: Who actually owns the value that an athlete creates?

That question does not yet have a clean answer. Until it does, everything else — the marketplaces, collectives, compliance frameworks, and revenue-sharing settlements — is just rearranging furniture in a building without a foundation.

I competed as a college athlete in the 1990s, then worked as a securities attorney, and have since built companies at the intersection of sports, culture and capital markets. Across those vantage points, one thing is clear: The commercial infrastructure underneath athlete identity has never been built properly. If the market keeps moving at its current pace, the athletes who were supposed to benefit most will remain the least protected participants in their own ecosystem.

That is both the problem and the opportunity.

A market has been created. A system has not

The scale of change in four years is historic. The House v. NCAA settlement, finalized in 2025, opened the door for schools to directly compensate athletes and formalized centralized review through NIL Go.

Washington is now structurally involved. The proposed SCORE Act aims to establish a national NIL framework, clarify athlete employment status and stabilize what has been a patchwork of laws and policies.

The market is real. Volume is real. Regulatory attention is real.

What is not yet real is a coherent operating system beneath it. Rights are scattered across contracts, emails, collectives........

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