Jalen Rose wants college athletes to have more freedom with endorsements

Could athletes receive a percentage of school sponsorship dollars?

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) is not a new concept in sports. However, college athletes being able to monetize their own NIL is new.

Universities and third parties have been able to monetize the NIL of college athletes for decades. Now the athletes have more control over their own publicity rights. However, former professional and college athlete and current sports analyst, Jalen Rose, wants to see athletes gain even more freedom.

Currently, college athletes are bound not only by NCAA rules and state laws surrounding NIL but also by university and team policies. This limits the brand sponsors college athletes can obtain individually.

For example, LSU athletics has a sponsorship with Nike which limits the sponsors their athletes can have unless they receive a special dispensation to have a conflicting sponsor. LSU women’s basketball player Flau’jae Johnson is sponsored by PUMA Hoops, but she cannot wear their apparel during games. It was a unique deal because Nike could mostly likely not approved of the athlete having a competing brand partner, but they likely realized the optics of that sort of intervention on their part.

Rose wants college athletes to get a piece of the broader sponsorship pie. He wants them to be able to have more freedom in which sponsors they are allowed to partner with and to receive a percentage of monetary compensation from school sponsors.

Currently, there are others in the collegiate sports ecosystem who agree with Rose. A lawsuit, whose intention is to do just what Rose proposed, is currently making its way through the court system with a tentative trial date set for 2024. House v NCAA seeks to claim revenue-sharing compensation from the NCAA and its member schools to athletes along with taking away restrictions on athletes ability to be compensated for their NIL.

“Despite all these NIL deals, the NCAA is doing great. There’s been no harm for consumer interest or competitive balance. I think most people would say that the NCAA and its various sports are successful as they’ve ever been. They just had the highest-watched women’s tournament in history by far and probably the most competitive parity in the men’s tournament,” says Winston & Strawn co-executive chairman Jeffrey L. Kessler.