Could Big Ten schools use NIL deals to circumvent salary cap?

Illustration by Jackson Kronland

Big Ten universities reported thousands of third-party NIL deals to the NCAA this year, just as they have since NIL’s introduction in 2021. The highest payments are valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But the conference’s biggest earners, and the companies behind these deals, are still a mystery to the public, an Indiana Daily Student and Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism investigation found.

The landmark $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement, which went into effect July 1, allows colleges to directly pay student athletes for their name, image and likeness. Schools that adopt the new revenue-sharing model for compensating student-athletes — including Indiana University — can pay them up to a cap of $20.5 million for the 2025-26 school year. This maximum is expected to increase each year until 2035, the last year of the settlement’s term.

While student-athletes can still sign third-party NIL deals, the agreements cannot be used to circumvent the salary cap and must be for a “valid business purpose.”

However, an IDS and Arnolt Center analysis of Big Ten universities’ NIL disclosures found major inconsistencies in schools’ reports — inconsistencies that could make it more difficult for the public to independently determine if schools are exceeding the cap.

In 2024, the since-reformed NCAA Division I Council unanimously decided to require student-athletes to share information on NIL agreements valued at more than $600 with their schools. Schools were then required to deidentify the data and provide it to the NCAA at least twice a year. The new rule aimed to create a nationwide standard disclosure requirement. At the time, at least 20 states had varying laws requiring student-athletes to share the information.

The IDS and Arnolt Center requested NIL disclosures from 14 Big Ten schools reported between Aug. 1, 2024, and Feb. 18, 2025, before the House settlement took effect. Six schools — Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin — provided redacted disclosures or deidentified the data. Eight others either denied or never fulfilled the request, submitted in February.

The schools’ disclosures included inconsistent information, making it more difficult to compare deals across the conference. Some schools detailed the athletes’ gender or the team they played for, while others omitted information.

All schools’ disclosures also included a category for the type of activity connected to the deal — activities including posting on social media or signing autographs. However, one of the most common activity types for four schools was listed as “other.” Minnesota partly or fully redacted most activity descriptions. School representatives didn’t respond to requests for clarification on what this unspecified category could include. Without this information, the public can’t decipher how much athletes are being paid and why.


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Michigan State specified when school resources were used to help athletes secure deals, but no other university did in their disclosures. Most school representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment about when school resources are used. However, Nebraska, which the IDS did not obtain records for, specified the school has agreements with Opendorse and The Brandr Group to help athletes secure NIL deals.

There’s limited public information about some of the conference’s most expensive deals.

Michigan reported a $70,000 “representation disclosure” deal paid to a single athlete in September 2024 but does not specify the athlete’s sport or gender.

At Michigan State, a football player received $36,000 for posting on Instagram, though the details on the post were redacted. Another football player at Michigan State received $24,101 for signing autographs.

Maryland disclosed an NIL deal valued at $250,000 but provided little information on the deal. The activity was dated Jan. 7, 2025, but was categorized as “other.” No information on the athlete(s) or sport involved was provided. No other disclosed deal surpassed $75,000 in value.

Wisconsin reported a deal from Jan. 15 valued at $153,462.50. Like Maryland, Wisconsin provided very little information about the deal. The activity type was listed as “other,” and it was specified that a collective was the compensating party, although no specific collective was identified. No information was given about the athlete(s) or sport that the deal involved and no other deal surpassed $77,000.

Oregon provided 3,768 NIL disclosures dating from July 1, 2021, to Jan. 1, 2025. However, of the disclosures, only 161 of the transactions included the monetary value. All of the value-disclosed transactions occurred between July 1, 2021, and Oct. 5, 2021. The highest disclosed transactions were a football autograph signing worth $10,500 and $10,000 for a “NFT digital trading card deal” for a football player.

Minnesota redacted nearly all of the information on the four documents provided. The transaction, athlete and vendor were often redacted while the value of the deals was usually available, but there were inconsistencies across all four documents.

In an email to the IDS, Minnesota executive associate athletic director Jeremiah Carter and senior associate athletic director Paul Rovnak said Minnesota redacts any date indirectly or directly related to the student athlete “to separate public and private information.” They said public information available about the deals "makes redaction more variable in certain circumstances.”


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The House settlement tasks the newly-created College Sports Commission with enforcing third-party NIL deal regulations and requires student-athletes to report some deals to the clearinghouse “NIL Go.”

Though IU did not fulfill the request for disclosures, Jeremy Gray, Indiana senior associate athletic director, said Indiana operates NIL deals exclusively through the newly formed NIL Go. Indiana doesn’t screen any potential vendors for deals, nor does it possess any records of NIL deals made by its student-athletes, Gray said. Additionally, no external parties can access the records kept by NIL Go.

Gray said Indiana is uninvolved in the process of screening NIL partners and deals, and that it would only become aware of a deal violating NCAA rules (the House v. NCAA salary cap or others) if NIL Go notified them.

In the wake of the House settlement, all NIL deals valued at least $600 must be reported for approval. Recently, Front Office Sports reported major conference executives and NIL collectives have grown frustrated with the system, particularly at delays for NIL Go approval of deals. As a result, some collectives have started bypassing the approval system.

The lack of confidence in NIL Go raises concerns over Indiana’s hands-off approach to deals. If the collectives that make deals with Indiana student-athletes begin bypassing NIL Go, there wouldn’t be any screening of any NIL deals, leaving all parties unaware of any potential violations.

Michael LeRoy, labor and employment relations professor at the University of Illinois, said the public should have access to general disclosure data.

“It’s important for the public to remain confident in the integrity of the sport, and that entails disclosure of what agreements are being made,” LeRoy said. “Not necessarily the amounts, but with whom.”

Each institution also redacted the student-athletes’ names and the vendors behind the deal.

“The school has an interest in ensuring that athletes are not making deals that would essentially embarrass the school and embarrass the team and degrade the brand of the school,” LeRoy said.

NIL researcher Thilo Kunkel, however, doesn’t believe detailed NIL disclosures should be available to members of the general public.

“I don’t see a reason why these student-athletes should be treated different to someone who is a really talented musician who’s going to university, or someone who’s a really talented actor or anyone else monetizing their name, image and likeness while they’re at a university,” Kunkel said.

“Some random person” should not be able to see what a student-athlete’s personal income is, he said. However, he believes universities should be able to have some level of oversight if they start paying athletes directly.

“I think here it makes sense to understand why a specific student-athlete that engages in sport at that university, why they’re sometimes being paid more than the president of the university or some of the faculty or anyone in competing or anyone working at that university,” Kunkel said.

Half the schools did not disclose athletes’ gender. LeRoy said he doesn’t think it’s necessarily important to see what individual athletes are earning, rather a breakdown of what schools are spending in the aggregate on each team. He argues it’s important for the public and experts to see the gender breakdown of NIL deals to identify potential disparities between male and female athletes.

“As we move into the new athletic model for universities at the D1 level, we’re likely to see cutting back on non-revenue sports, and this would impact women more than men,” he said. “So, this, again, drives the NIL conversation. Are sports going to be cut in order to increase the payroll for the football team or the men’s basketball team?”

LeRoy said schools and the NCAA should still disclose third-party NIL deals, even if the House settlement has created a “new NIL era.”

“The No. 1 reason is so that you can ensure that one school is not outspending its rival school, and everybody’s playing by the rules,” he said. “But unless you have that disclosure, you don’t know that for a fact.”

The Arnolt Center and IDS didn't request records from Northwestern, USC, Penn State and Nebraska because they are not subject to the same public records laws as the other Big Ten public universities.

Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State, Purdue, Rutgers, UCLA and Washington denied or never fulfilled the requests.

Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism interns Mia Hilkowitz, Jacob Spudich, Ava Westendorf, Peyton Smith, Brian Gring and Grace Bundy contributed to this reporting.