- NIL stands for name, image, and likeness — the right of college athletes to get paid for their own brand. Here is how it works, how the 2025 revenue-sharing era changed it, and what it means for athletes at BYU, Utah, and Utah State.
- AJ Dybantsa connect back to Utah Homegrown and the wider football picture.
- The story is backed by 7 sources and a visible last-verified date.
August 24, 2026
August 24, 2026
5 min / 1,065 words
7 official links
NIL stands for name, image, and likeness — the legal right every college athlete now has to be paid for the commercial use of their own identity. In practice, NIL is the umbrella term for the money a college athlete can earn from endorsements, social-media posts, autograph signings, camps, merchandise, and, since 2025, direct payments from their own school. It is the change that turned amateur college sports into a market, and it reaches every athlete in Utah, from a BYU basketball headliner to a walk-on at Utah State.
This guide explains what NIL is, where it came from, how the rules changed in 2025, and what it all means concretely for athletes in the Beehive State. It is the starting point for our NIL series — from there you can go deeper on how to get an NIL deal, how NIL vs. a scholarship actually compare, and what NIL taxes look like for a student-athlete.
What does NIL stand for?
NIL stands for name, image, and likeness. Those three things are your identity as a public figure: your name on a jersey or a poster, your image in a photo or a commercial, and your likeness — your recognizable persona — in a video game, on a billboard, or across a brand's social feed. For decades, college athletes were the only people in America who could not sell the rights to their own name, image, and likeness. NIL is the term for finally being able to.
An NIL deal is simply a business agreement in which someone pays an athlete to use that identity. That can be a local car dealership paying a quarterback to appear in an ad, a supplement brand paying for Instagram posts, or a fan-funded collective paying an athlete to sign autographs at a charity event. What NIL is not is direct pay for playing or a signing bonus for choosing a school — although, as the rules below show, the line between NIL and school-paid compensation blurred in 2025.
How does NIL work in college sports?
Modern NIL began on July 1, 2021. A day earlier, facing a wave of state laws and a unanimous Supreme Court loss in *NCAA v. Alston*, the NCAA adopted an interim policy letting athletes in all three divisions earn NIL money without losing eligibility. Overnight, endorsements, sponsored posts, autograph sales, and camps became legal for college athletes for the first time in the association's history.
For roughly four years, that money came from third parties — brands, businesses, and booster-funded NIL collectives — but never directly from schools. That changed with the House v. NCAA settlement, approved by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in June 2025. The settlement did two things. First, it created a back-damages fund of roughly $2.8 billion, paid over 10 years, for former athletes who were barred from earning NIL money before the settlement. Second, and more important going forward, it launched revenue sharing: starting July 1, 2025, schools may pay their athletes directly.
That direct pay is capped. For the 2025-26 academic year the cap is roughly $20.5 million per school — about 22% of the average Power Five program's athletic revenue — and it is set to rise about 4% a year over the next two seasons before a scheduled re-evaluation. Third-party NIL deals still exist on top of that cap, but deals of $600 or more now route through a clearinghouse meant to confirm they reflect fair market value rather than disguised recruiting payments. The result is a two-track system: schools paying athletes directly under the cap, plus outside NIL deals layered on top.
How does NIL work for Utah college athletes?
The same national rules apply in Utah, and the state's biggest programs sit squarely inside the new money. Both BYU and the University of Utah compete in the Big 12 — BYU since 2023, Utah since 2024 — one of the four power conferences that will fund the House settlement and opt into full revenue sharing. That means Utah and BYU athletes are eligible for direct school payments under the roughly $20.5 million cap, plus outside NIL deals, at the highest level of the sport.
Utah State is climbing too. The Aggies left the Mountain West and began play in the rebuilt Pac-12 in fall 2026, a move that raises the revenue — and the NIL stakes — for athletes in Logan. Across all three, NIL collectives remain central: fan- and booster-funded groups that pool money to strike deals with athletes, effectively the connective tissue between a fan base and a roster.
The ceiling in Utah is real. BYU's recruitment of forward AJ Dybantsa, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2026 NBA Draft after a single season in Provo, showed how far NIL money can reach for a marquee program. But NIL is not only for stars. A gymnast with a strong social following, a volleyball player who runs local clinics, or a football lineman doing a hometown ad can all earn — and you can browse the athletes already doing it on our Utah NIL athletes hub.
Who is eligible for NIL?
Eligibility is broad. Any athlete on an NCAA roster — Division I, II, or III, men's and women's sports alike — can pursue third-party NIL deals. Direct school revenue-sharing payments, by contrast, depend on the school choosing to opt in, which the power-conference programs (including Utah and BYU) are doing and many smaller schools are not. High-school athletes' NIL rights are governed separately by each state's high-school association. And athletes must still follow their school's disclosure rules and any restrictions on categories like gambling, alcohol, or conflicting sponsors.
Key facts:
- What NIL is: An athlete's right to be paid for their name, image, and likeness — endorsements, social posts, autographs, camps, merchandise, and, since 2025, direct school payments.
- Origin: The NCAA's interim NIL policy took effect July 1, 2021, letting all Division I, II, and III athletes earn NIL money without losing eligibility.
- 2025 shift: The House v. NCAA settlement, approved June 2025, added a ~$2.8 billion back-damages fund and, starting July 1, 2025, direct revenue sharing capped near $20.5 million per school in 2025-26.
- Utah context: BYU (Big 12 since 2023) and Utah (Big 12 since 2024) can pay athletes directly under the cap; Utah State began Pac-12 play in fall 2026. NIL collectives remain central across all three.
