How NIL Transformed the Potential for College Athletes to Support Social Causes
Jonah Zaidman
24/09/2026
For decades, college athletes in America held contradictory positions. Even though they were often quite visible and influential, athletes were prohibited by NCAA eligibility rules from financially profiting from their position. Importantly, this restriction applied to not only commercial sponsors but to cause-oriented organizations as well. The 2021 adoption of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies fundamentally altered this landscape, granting college athletes the ability to commercially earn money from their athletic identity for the first time. The “brand creation” that resulted from these changes also expanded the impact that college athletes could make when advocating for social change. However, with this new power came new contractual limits. For example, corporate NIL contracts frequently include morality clauses and provisions that restrict the college athlete’s ability to advocate for a chosen social cause. This paper presents a comparative conceptual analysis on athlete-activism to examine what changed for the college athletes supporting social causes before and after NIL. This paper also compares post-NIL college athlete-activism to the professional context and explores why post-NIL athlete-activism is more complex than the simple expansion of college athletes’ power.