🏅How NIL Curricula Are Shaping the Future of Sports Business

Hi everyone,

Today’s newsletter comes from Amber Coles, a freelance writer who was interested in learning more about the NIL classes offered at colleges across the country. That’s right: schools are offering classes in NIL, preparing students majoring in everything from journalism to business to work in the growing economy NIL has spawned.

Today’s newsletter is a free preview of what would usually be premium content. Consider it a peek behind the curtain at what you’d get if you became a paying subscriber.

— Joan

“If nobody knows your name, then how am I supposed to know what you look like?”

David Meluni, an assistant professor in the Falk College of Sport at Syracuse, shares that quote with his students all the time. It’s his way of clearly defining the wild west that is the name, image and likeness (NIL) era in college sports. 

“I can't take credit for it, but I say it all the time,” Meluni explained. “If I don't know your name, I certainly don't know what you look like, and I definitely can't maximize or monetize your likeness.”

Now it’s Meluni’s job to teach students how to turn NIL into real income. Four years after the NCAA opened the door for athletes to cash in on their NIL, more than two dozen colleges, including Syracuse, have introduced for-credit courses and stand-alone certificate programs that treat NIL as a multidisciplinary subject, blending sport management, marketing, law and entrepreneurship. They’re typically offered as electives, making them accessible to students across a range of majors, provided they meet prerequisites and application requirements. At Syracuse, for example, the “Name, Image, Likeness” course fulfills requirements for both the sport management minor and the emerging sports enterprise minor. At Iowa, Arkansas State and South Florida, students have the opportunity to complete degrees in their chosen fields along with, or independently of, a specialized NIL certificate.

Schools designed these courses and programs to answer a relevant question: How do we teach students everything they need to know about the ever-changing world of NIL? Yet key questions remain: Who are these courses really for? What do students actually learn? And who’s teaching them? 

Though these classes may seem athlete-focused, they’re not exclusive to athletes. Dan Matheson, director of the sport and recreation management program at Iowa, noted that only two of the 24 students in his most recent NIL class were current or former athletes. So instead of teaching athletes about NIL, these courses focus on marketing athletes, with an emphasis on building and managing their brands. To give students real-world experience, professors enlist student-athlete volunteers who serve as clients. These partnerships offer students real-world, hands-on learning opportunities and experiences they can take with them beyond the classroom.

Speaking of real-world, the instructors teaching these courses are not traditional academics. Though a few athletic department staffers moonlight as guest lecturers, the day-to-day teaching load has most often fallen to sports business faculty with impressive industry résumés. Meluni spent years in sponsorship sales before joining Syracuse; Matheson led baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs.  

So what does taking an NIL class look like? 

Every course differs in structure, class size and additions like guest speakers and case studies, but each relies on dynamic, evolving material. In the past four years, there have been constant developments in the world of NIL. To keep up, these classes have abandoned traditional lectures in favor of agency-style environments.

At Iowa, Matheson turns his classroom into a boutique sports agency. Mixed teams of law, journalism and sport management majors develop business plans — including websites, pitch decks and compliance checklists for volunteer Hawkeye athletes.

At Syracuse, Meluni builds his course around three live projects. Groups of students pair with athletes to produce semester-long marketing decks, compete in brand-deal case-study tournaments and run a Stukent “Mimic NIL” simulator that rewards savvy social-media strategy. (Stukent is an edtech company whose simulator “hires” students to be consultants at fictitious agencies.) In the simulator, they write outreach emails, negotiate contracts and analyze sponsorship offers. By the final exam, each student leaves with two industry certificates and a portfolio-ready deck.

“We structure the class more like an office or a project team. It’s not a lecture. They’re accountable to each other — and to their athlete,” Meluni said. 

When Dominique Camp, a women’s basketball player, suffered a season-ending injury during the 2023-24 season, she didn’t just sit on the sideline. She became a client. Through relationships built from NIL class and the students’ work, she was able to land a no-cash merchandise deal: custom slides she gifted to the entire team, including the support staff. It wasn’t flashy, but it was executed from start to finish by students.

“That’s exactly what NIL is supposed to be,” Meluni said. “It doesn’t have to be six figures. It’s about being creative, being strategic and showing value.”

These NIL courses go beyond theory and give students the reps they’ll need in the working world, whether they end up negotiating contracts, producing branded content or working inside athletic departments. And athletes who may enroll in the course or volunteer get something equally valuable: a window into how their name, image and likeness fit into a broader business strategy. They see the inner workings of campaigns, understand what brands are really looking for and learn how to protect and grow their own platforms.

“This isn’t a class where you memorize a chapter and move on,” Matheson said. “It’s a class where you’re building something —  and that something could actually live out in the world.”

As NIL regulations continue to evolve and schools begin directly compensating athletes, these courses may soon become more than electives; they could become essential. They have reshaped how academia interacts with the athletics department, allowing students to bring their everyday knowledge to the classroom. Former students of these programs have gone on to start their own sport marketing agencies, broker NIL deals for their own homegrown brands and land agency jobs straight out of college. The new NIL playbook isn’t teaching the rules. It’s empowering students to write their own.

Amber Coles is a Richmond, Virginia, native and VCU grad. She runs her own sole proprietorship, Jennuine Raydiance. When she’s not freelancing, she’s hanging with friends, writing or gaming. 

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