From Scholarship to Sponsorship: Name, Image, and Likeness and the Shifting Structure of the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s Amateurism Model

Abstract

This thesis examines how Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) reforms have restructured the landscape of collegiate sports by blurring the boundary between amateur and professional sports structures. Through a historical analysis, my own argument and analysis, and ethnographic interviews with current and former Division I athletes this thesis investigates how athletes navigate the institutional structures that have been shaped by commercialization, visibility, and labor dynamics. This study reveals how NIL has promoted athlete advocacy and empowerment while also complicating the role of amateurism and the erosion of the NCAA’s control over collegiate athletics. Within this argument, I explain how NIL has generated both benefits and unintended consequences to its amateurism model and question the role of the NCAA’s authority in the future.

Keywords: Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), NCAA, Amateurism, Commercialization, Professionalization, Agency