It’s a warm Saturday in October. The sun is shining. Fans just left the tailgate lots. Pom-poms in hand, ready to enter the stadium and spend the next four or so hours cheering on their favorite players, and their favorite team. Life is good. Simple. However, for the players waiting in the tunnel, reaching this moment was anything but simple. It took dedication. It took decisions. And it took a conversation about money.
Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) refers to an individual’s legal right to profit from their personal brand. Before the NCAA changed its rules in 2021, student-athletes were required to give up those rights when they committed to play college sports. They could not earn money from endorsements, sponsorships or other business opportunities tied to their name or image.
Following this new rule change, policies were instantly put into place to help guide programs through the transition. According to an ESPN article, “A combination of school policies and state laws dictate what deals athletes can make.” In states without clear laws, schools created their own policies, with NCAA approval. And while state laws were meant to prevent NIL from turning into a recruitment strategy, “some states have murky laws surrounding just how involved a school’s booster club can get.”
For years, the SEC dominated college football. Now sports analysts say NIL is changing the game.
In a 2023 Saturday Down South article, Andrew Olson highlighted the domination the SEC had on college football. Olson stated, “Georgia’s 2022 title extends an incredible run for the conference. Starting with LSU in 2019, SEC teams have now won the last 4 national championships. Alabama won in 2020 before UGA won the last 2 national titles.”
Olson also went on to speak about the SEC’s run of the national championship in the BCA era and how the SEC won 13 out of the last 17 national championships.
When NIL was first brought to college athletics, many believed it would benefit the powerhouse conferences like the SEC, causing their domination to only continue. However, Tim Derdenger, Associate Professor of Marketing Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University, studied this idea of NIL leveling the playing field in college football, where his findings overturned the idea of the “rich getting richer.”
“What people missed was how NIL effectively changed the behavior of recruits. People thought that recruits would simply just go to the highest dollar amount, and that’s partially true, but I think what people were missing was who was going to give them the highest dollar amount,” Derdenger said.
According to his research, many top players realized smaller, lower-ranked schools would offer greater NIL financial benefits. This actually encouraged a greater spread of talent across more teams.
“With NIL, players are recognizing, they don’t need to go to the best ranked school anymore. They see it, they know it, they can get paid and their probability of getting drafted has no effect. These top athletes know they can go elsewhere, so that mixing of players has led to greater parity of the game,” Derdenger said.
Although NIL didn’t cause the SEC’s dominance to disappear, it didn’t completely destroy it either.
“It’s certainly evolving within the SEC,” Derdenger said. “Look at Ole Miss. Look at Lane Kiffin at LSU. It’s evolving, but it’s also shifting. You’re seeing the dominance within a conference being spread out. And that’s because of NIL and the transfer portal.”
With more athletes starting to choose money over prestige, according to Derdenger’s research, the SEC must shift alongside the players’ experience.
Dr. Molly Harry, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, examined NIL from the athlete’s perspective and how NIL is reshaping college athlete identity.
“A lot of the research I’m doing right now is looking at how NIL is shifting athletes’ identities,” Harry said. “Fans and researchers alike have only seen or appreciated college athletes as students and athletes. But now they have the ability to become more than the “student-athlete” and can use NIL to engage with entrepreneurial identities.”
With athletes now able to build their brands and make money in school, they have more power. They can lean into their interests and possibly find an identity outside of just their sport.
“I think it offers a lot of unique opportunities, if done appropriately, for athletes to cultivate influencer, entrepreneur identities,” Harry said. “I think if done right, and done ethically and morally, it’s a good opportunity for athletes to become more than athletes and more than students and make plans for themselves financially and personally that they can execute when they leave their institutions.”
For the SEC, NIL rules now mean learning to support athletes as full individuals. But how can programs lean into this new player identity?
Harry emphasized that because much of NIL activity takes place on social media, universities must continue prioritizing NIL and social media literacy programs for their athletes. She explained that while social media can be the easiest way for athletes to build a brand, research shows that too much engagement can be harmful.
Harry also noted that not every athlete wants to center their NIL efforts around the same thing, so schools should help them explore alternative opportunities that better align with their personal interests and long-term goals.
By educating athletes about the full range of NIL options and taking time to understand their future aspirations, institutions can better tailor opportunities and help athletes succeed beyond the field.
NIL hasn’t weakened the SEC. It has, instead, challenged the conference to rethink what leadership looks like. If championships alone no longer define dominance, then the SEC must prove what “means more” is its ability to evolve with the times.
