🏅NIL dollars for ... political endorsements?

Hi everyone,

For your Monday morning reading, we’re bringing you a really interesting story from guest author Benjamin Knudson, whose pitch for this piece intrigued me from the get-go. Benjamin is a sports researcher and former political staffer, so this story about NIL dollars and political endorsements is right in his wheelhouse. Enjoy!

— Joan

NIL dollars for ... political endorsements?

In 2024, incumbent U.S. senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) was fighting to retain his seat in a deep-red state, facing off against Republican Tim Sheehy, whom then-candidate Donald Trump had endorsed. Pollsters considered the race neck-and-neck, and it was clear Tester’s tenure in Washington could be coming to an end. That’s when Montana Together, a political activism group, tried to get creative. 

Last summer, the PAC offered several University of Montana athletes NIL deals in exchange for endorsing Tester, using third-party vendor Opendorse to facilitate the agreements. Two women’s soccer players accepted and received $800 each to endorse Tester. The athletes were given a list of topics to discuss in Instagram reels; one talked about public lands, and the other discussed housing, healthcare and jobs. (The players have since deleted the videos from their Instagram feeds.)

It was an unorthodox use of NIL. Most third-party deals involve stumping for products, not people. But the endorsements were perfectly legal — as long as the athletes didn’t use university intellectual property. But even with Montana Together’s creative use of funds, Tester still lost, falling to Sheehy by a seven-point margin.

The Montana race was the highest-profile example of a political endorsement NIL deal so far, but it was not the first. In 2022, Dresser Winn, then the quarterback at the University of Tennessee-Martin, signed an NIL deal to support a candidate for district attorney in Tennessee’s 27th Judicial District. And other government entities have dipped their toes in the NIL space, too. Zia Cooke, a former star point guard for the South Carolina women’s basketball team, posted a paid advertisement for vaccines.gov in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

College athletics and the American government have become ever more intertwined in recent years. Longtime football coach Tommy Tuberville is a U.S. senator, Heisman Trophy-winner Herschel Walker narrowly lost a Senate race and is nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, and legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban has been lobbying President Donald Trump to fix college athletics through a federal commission. But should that relationship extend to athlete political endorsements? And will the recent House settlement, which instituted a clearinghouse to determine the validity of all NIL deals, have any effect?

That new clearinghouse, NIL Go, is run by Deloitte and tasked with trying to regulate deals, ensuring contracts are binding and of fair market value. Political endorsements might be a tough one to handle. 

“The House v. NCAA settlement framework has no mention of the categories or causes student-athletes are permitted to endorse with their NIL rights,” said Julian Valentin, a senior vice president at Opendorse. “The spirit of the new regulations is to create guardrails on entities and individuals affiliated with the institutions, which, in some cases, could include political candidates.”

Valentin pointed out that state laws and institutional policies dictate category-related NIL regulations. “Commonly prohibited categories include drugs, alcohol, gambling, firearms and adult entertainment,” he added.

Political endorsements could pose a different hazard. A student-athlete might face backlash from fans if she posts in favor of a polarizing candidate — even if she were just trying to make a few dollars. Winn’s post on X announcing his endorsement was met with intrigue, not hateful comments, perhaps in part due to the fact that it was the first known political endorsement for NIL dollars. It was also a hyper-local issue, without nationwide impact. Cooke, meanwhile, received backlash in the comments of her post for the Department of Health and Human Services; she’d received her deal during a contentious political climate, and it’s easy to see how a more polarizing issue or candidate, though monetarily intriguing, could be a net-negative for a student-athlete’s well-being. 

When asked if Opendorse is able to limit offers that could be predatory to student-athletes or put them in uncomfortable positions, Valentin said that since Opendorse is just the facilitation mechanism, it’s usually up to the student-athlete and the brand/buyer to discuss the risks involved with endorsing a political figure. “Student-athletes are able to make their own decisions on how they would like to use their NIL rights,” he said. “Different athletes are comfortable doing different deals, based on their personal brand and interests. With that said, there is protective language built into the deal-acceptance flow for all deals. There is a secure chat function where contracting parties can discuss deal terms. We also provide educational resources, help center support and direct service to all users.”

Opendorse’s job is to provide a wide-range of NIL opportunities to athletes — so if a deal is legal under NIL regulations, even if it could risk tarnishing an athlete’s reputation, then athletes are going to, and probably should be able to, have the opportunity to make that deal. But from a university’s perspective, it might be a bit more complicated. Athletes represent universities, and public schools, under 501(c)(3) regulations, are unable to endorse political candidates. Schools may then walk a blurry line; they cannot limit an athlete’s freedom of speech or expression, but they might not want to encourage student-athletes to endorse political figures.

We’re just more than a year out from the mid-term elections, which means campaigning will begin in full force during the 2025-26 school year — and it seems possible, if not likely, that more political endorsements come into play in the NIL world. But with NIL Go and its greater scrutiny, they may be better regulated than last time. Will the clearinghouse put a cap on profits from political endorsements? Could it ban them altogether? Or could it require student athletes to discuss the pros and cons of an endorsement with an NIL Go employee before agreeing to a deal? It remains to be seen, but it’s certainly worth watching. 

Benjamin Knudson is a sports researcher and former political staffer. Based out of Las Vegas by way of Boise, Idaho, Ben's research spans from collective bargaining agreements in professional sports to discrepancies in concussion reporting in rural versus urban settings. During his undergraduate studies at Boise State University, Ben was a political field director for Idaho Lieutenant Governor Scott Bedke. While obtaining his master's degree from University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Ben worked as a researcher for the UNLV Sports Innovation Institute.