The New NIL Secrecy Play: States Shielding Schools, Not Athletes
OPENING STATEMENTS
If there’s one thing abundantly clear in college athletics right now, it’s the lack of consistency. It’s this lack of clarity that’s having profound repercussions right now, but, I suspect, will create consequences that we can’t anticipate and that will not leave sports and, particularly, student-athletes, in better standing.
This comes to mind in thinking about two legislative moves this week. South Carolina and Wisconsin are potentially creating two very different stories about the same thing: who gets to see the money in college sports.
In South Carolina, a House and Senate‑backed bill would explicitly exempt university‑athlete pay and NIL information from the state’s FOIA, but the bill is facing considerable pushback with Governor Henry McMaster signaling discomfort about creating secret funds at public institutions. Meanwhile, there’s a proposal in Wisconsin that would funnel tens of millions in state money into University of Wisconsin athletics, all while exempting NIL contracts and “strategy, allocation, revenue generation and news” tied to NIL from the state’s open‑records law. Legislators say they’re trying to protect “competitive interests” and student privacy by shielding details of individual deals. The message to taxpayers is clear: trust us with more money, but don’t ask how we share it with the athletes whose labor justifies the investment.
More broadly, there are about 11 states whose NIL statutes include language that shields some payments or disclosures from public records laws, often accomplished by defining NIL data as protected educational or personally identifiable information. Lawsuits in New Mexico and elsewhere are testing how far those shields actually reach.
Why are state legislators doing this?
First, they are responding to the loudest voices in the room: public universities, athletics directors, and lobbyists who insist that disclosure will hurt recruiting and competitive balance. Their argument is simple: if NIL and revenue‑sharing numbers at public schools are visible, private schools and out‑of‑state rivals will use that information to poach athletes. They wrap this in the language of student privacy, even though the same laws often force athletes to hand over detailed contract information to the school while shielding almost nothing about how the institution itself behaves.
Second, secrecy makes life easier for institutions that are only now confronting real pay obligations. Once you acknowledge that athletes are workers in all but name, you invite hard questions: Who is getting what? Which sports are prioritized? How are women being treated compared to men? (My newsletter last week focused on Penn State allocating .66% of NIL rev share to female athletes as an indicator of what’s to come). If you are a legislator who sees your role as protecting “your” flagship, closing the books on NIL and revenue‑sharing is a tempting way to avoid a round of Title IX lawsuits and uncomfortable headlines.
Third, this is about control. Public access to numbers is leverage. If journalists, advocates, and athletes can see deal terms, especially in the aggregate, they can expose patterns, organize around inequities, and demand changes grounded in facts. Locking that data behind institutional walls keeps the power to define “fairness” squarely with universities and the new enforcement bodies they helped design. Legislatures are choosing to strengthen that control at the exact moment athletes are finally gaining some.
Who does this benefit, and who doesn’t?
It clearly benefits public universities and their athletic departments. They gain insulation from scrutiny just as the financial stakes spike: no one can easily track whether a school is steering new money toward football at the expense of Olympic sports, or toward men at the expense of women. Conferences and national entities gain, too. The fewer hard numbers in the public record, the easier it is to claim “we’re complying” without having to prove it.
Collectives, big donors, and agents also benefit from opacity. If only insiders see the real market, it is much easier to sell a lopsided deal to a teenager who cannot compare it against what similar players are getting down the road. Secrecy historically favors the repeat players, not the 19‑year‑old with one shot at a career.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Student‑athletes are on the losing end of this trade. True privacy, such as protecting home addresses, banking details, and other sensitive identifiers, does not require hiding pay levels or aggregate allocation data. What these bills actually remove from view is the information athletes and advocates need to assess discrimination, misrepresentation, and basic fairness. And the ability to make their own business decisions based on what the marketplace bears. When you cannot see what others like you are earning, you cannot tell if you are being underpaid. When you cannot see how institutional money is split by sport and gender, you cannot meaningfully enforce Title IX or negotiate from a position of strength.
NIL was sold as a step toward recognizing athletes’ rights. To their names, their time, and a share of the revenue they generate. The new wave of secrecy bills takes that leverage and routes it back to the same institutions that fought NIL in the first place. Athletes should not be fooled.
In our support of athletes rights, we hope, and advocate, that the reservations in South Carolina are more of a trend than a blip.
EXHIBIT A
Eligibility precedents seem to manifest every week. Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar’s lawsuit is the latest, and it could redefine what “four years” of college football really means. He’s asking a Tennessee court to stop the NCAA from counting his junior college seasons toward his Division I eligibility, even though he’s already used the blanket JUCO waiver that followed the Diego Pavia ruling that kicked off a lot of the eligibility questions. If Aguilar wins, JUCO years effectively become a separate track, perhaps a minor league feeding older, more experienced players into Power 5 rosters. That would push average ages up, squeeze high school recruits further, and reward coaches who stockpile 23‑ to 25‑year‑olds in football, baseball, and other JUCO‑heavy sports.
EXHIBIT B
Ben Portnoy’s piece in SportsBusiness Journal this week nails why “are college football contracts enforceable?” is one of the defining questions of the new era. First, it shows schools trying to use House-era revenue-sharing and NIL deals as de facto transfer deterrents, even though they insist these are not employment contracts. Second, it highlights how wildly inconsistent these contracts are across leagues and schools, and how shaky the legal footing is when universities try to stop athletes from leaving or talking to other programs. Third, it underlines the core tension: schools want leverage and stability, but courts may ultimately prioritize athlete mobility over paper promises.
ON THE DOCKET
I keep coming back to the same question: is there a floor here, or do we just keep cutting until nothing is left but football, men’s basketball, and whatever satisfies the next spreadsheet or a high-powered alumni’s fascination? Marshall’s decision to drop women’s swimming and diving after this season is the latest gut punch. In just the first months of 2026, we’ve seen Marshall swimming and Gardner‑Webb men’s and women’s tennis get discontinued. Following a 2025 that had nearly two dozen Division I varsity sports were formally cut. Real teams. Real histories. Disappearing too fast.
FOOTNOTES
2,947
Distance, in miles, between UMass Amherst and new (and fellow) MAC member Sacramento State
