On June 30, 2021, the NCAA drastically changed its stance on how student-athletes at affiliated universities could earn money from their name, image and likeness (NIL).
Collegiate student-athletes were previously considered amateurs with NCAA guidelines strictly prohibiting financial compensation from NIL. But now, these student-athletes could earn money from their personal brand and popularity, something teams and conferences had been able to do for years.
Just under three years later, more changes in the NIL space were made in the state of South Carolina through the passage of a new state law, H. 4957. The law, which was signed by Gov. Henry McMaster on May 21, 2024, permits in-state colleges and universities to have increased oversight of its student-athletes' NIL deals, allowing them to operate "on a level playing field" with schools in other states that have adopted similar laws.
Lawmakers and college athletic department personnel spoke about what the law means and how it benefits student-athletes across the state of South Carolina.
South Carolina's NIL history
H. 4957 was not the state’s first attempt at enacting NIL legislation.
State Rep. Seth Rose, D-Richland, said the South Carolina state legislature wanted to help the state’s collegiate athletics programs remain competitive as other states passed legislation around the time of the NCAA’s decision in 2021. South Carolina’s response to this situation was to pass S. 685, which was signed into law by McMaster on May 6, 2021 of that year.
The bill allowed student-athletes to receive payment for their name, image and likeness but was restrictive in the ways that they could do so. According to the bill, universities could not “directly or indirectly create or facilitate compensation opportunities” for their student-athletes, who could only be compensated by third parties. This compensation could not be reliant on their athletic performance.
Rose said the South Carolina legislature expected the NCAA to provide more authority over NIL, but this did not happen, which ultimately came to South Carolina’s detriment.
“When the NCAA did not act and created this ‘wild, wild west,’ we actually were limiting and penalizing South Carolina colleges and universities with athletics programs because other states – our rivals – did not have language that prohibited them from being involved,” Rose said.
South Carolina would suspend S. 685 one year later through a proviso in the state’s annual budget. But this action only provided a temporary fix, Rose said, leading to the passage of South Carolina’s newest NIL law this past May.
H. 4957, a law Rose co-sponsored when it was introduced to the state legislature on Jan. 25, 2024, granted institutions the right to both directly and indirectly oversee NIL deals involving its student-athletes. It does not, however, require that student-athletes engage with their college or university as part of these deals.
There are numerous ways universities could increase their NIL involvement under the new law, Rose said. A student-athlete could, for example, have a photoshoot or commercial filmed at USC’s campus or athletic facilities. They could also have representatives from USC’s legal team look over their NIL contracts.
Rose said this provision could be especially beneficial for student-athletes who may not be able to afford third-party legal services, as it would help them from being taken advantage of.
"When you peel back the onion and you look at where we're at, you see there could be a lot of 'bad actors' out there," Rose said. "There could be somebody who's a shady character that is having a student-athlete sign a contract that they don't understand."
He added that it could be used as a valuable recruiting tool for some institutions, since the law provides student-athletes with more protections than schools in other states.
The new law does place restrictions on some NIL-related activities – student-athletes still cannot endorse tobacco, alcohol, illegal substances and sports betting in the state of South Carolina. But Rose said it is a "good thing" overall for the state, especially since its support spans across athletic rivalries and even the legislature’s partisan lines.
This was especially apparent on Feb. 6, 2024, when athletics personnel from South Carolina, Clemson and Coastal Carolina attended a South Carolina House Education and Public Works Committee meeting to lobby for the passing of the law.
“When you see Clemson and South Carolina and their board of trustees coming to the Statehouse, holding hands with legislators you know this is a needed thing,” Rose said. “It was dire enough that they were bringing their star power – football coaches, and the Dawn Staleys, the Lamont Parises – to the Statehouse, and that’s impactful to show that this is serious."
Benefits for the Gamecocks
Hilary Cox, Gamecock Athletics’ executive associate athletic director for strategic initiatives, said the purpose of state NIL laws are to allow institutions to go beyond what is outlined in the NCAA’s official rules. This means that the passage of H. 4957 extended additional benefits to USC’s athletic department, providing it with more avenues to interact with student-athletes in the NIL space.
One way the new law has given benefits to Gamecock Athletics and other athletic departments around the state is through flexibility. Rather than listing specific interactions that are permitted in the NIL space, the law uses more broad language, which allows schools to adjust their NIL strategy as rules and guidelines change.
Cox said this is important as new NIL-related developments continue to emerge.
“Our state law isn’t so much like, ‘You can do one, two, three (and so on)’ … It’s taking a more holistic, 50,000-foot approach of, like, ‘Hey, a school can do this as umbrella coverage,’” Cox said. “Setting it up that way just gives us more flexibility to adjust as change happens.”
Cox said another concept outlined in the law, protection, specifically focuses on making sure Gamecock Athletics follows state law, even if it violates NCAA guidelines. She added that this does not affect South Carolina specifically, but it is more prevalent in some states, like Virginia, that allow institutions to directly compensate student-athletes.
Ultimately, Cox said, the flexibility and protection concepts work in tandem to help USC increase its involvement in student-athlete-specific and institution-wide NIL affairs.
“Before, we could start to fundraise for a collective, but we had to walk away once it got to the end because we couldn’t be involved in that. Or, when you start talking about NIL dollars and things like that, as an institution, we can bring people together, but we basically had to leave the room when they had the conversations,” Cox said. “We don’t necessarily have to do that anymore.”
H. 4957 doesn't just affect how collegiate athletic departments function – it also influences NIL collectives, which are organizations that raise funds to compensate players for their name, image and likeness.
Collectives are typically associated with a university’s athletic department but sometimes can be tied to a specific team. The third-party entity that helps facilitate NIL deals for South Carolina student-athletes is the Garnet Trust, which became the official collective of Gamecock Athletics on July 27, 2023.
Mark Bonnoitt, Garnet Trust’s director of development, said the law has helped the relationship between Gamecock Athletics and the collective to grow stronger. The closer ties between both organizations have been demonstrated through benefits offered to donors, as they are now able to earn priority points for the Gamecock Club through donations to Garnet Trust.
Priority points for the Gamecock Club, Gamecock Athletics’ in-house fundraising organization for student-athletes, are used to determine rankings for season tickets, away tickets, parking passes and access to special events.
“They will be able to use resources within the Gamecock Club to help fund the Garnet Trust from an aspect of naming opportunities,” Bonnoitt said. “For example, if you made a pledge to the university, your name could be on a gate or a building within athletics, then a portion of those funds could be dedicated to NIL.”
Bonnoitt added that H. 4957 allows student-athletes to promote more than just the collective, providing them with additional means to be supported financially.
“Instead of just the players doing stuff for Garnet Trust, they will be able to do things to promote the University of South Carolina, to promote Gamecock Athletics, to promote season ticket sales, to promote whenever they have an event coming up,” Bonnoitt said.
The legislation and its impact on Gamecock Athletics has been positive overall, Cox said, as it helps the athletic department fulfill its responsibility to protect student-athletes and support them on and off the field.
“Previously, we weren’t really able to help them too much… It doesn’t make sense when we’re doing so much for our athletes and providing them so many benefits in all these other areas,” Cox said. “We just wanted to make sure that our athletes had all the proper information and we could give them all the resources they needed.”
A small-school perspective
The University of South Carolina is not the only in-state university affected by H. 4957. The law’s provisions also apply to athletic departments at all 12 NCAA Division I and all 15 NCAA Division II schools that reside in the state.
Of those 12 Division I institutions, only two, South Carolina and Clemson, are members of one of the NCAA’s Power Five conferences – the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. Schools in these conferences typically generate larger amounts of revenue and have larger budgets, which allow them to offer more resources to student-athletes.
Because of this, schools outside of the Power Five conferences have to be more creative when it comes to providing NIL services.
Drew Emory, Winthrop Athletics’ assistant athletic director of compliance, said student-athletes at the university are not frequently approached by businesses and other third parties for NIL deals.
Even D.J. Burns, a former Winthrop Eagle and Big South Men’s Basketball Player of the Year, who garnered national attention in the 2024 NCAA Final Four while playing for NC State, struggled with this issue. While attending Winthrop, Burns was unable to strike a NIL deal with Burns Chevrolet, a local car dealership in his hometown of Rock Hill.
As a result, athletes who are successful in the NIL space must be self-motivated to build relationships themselves, Emory said.
“That’s kind of been the M-O here at Winthrop and other small schools,” Emory said. “Outside of that very limited collective that a school might have, the kids that are going to benefit most from NIL are the ones who are going out and are seeking out these deals and not expecting anyone to come to them.”
The number of athletics personnel dedicated to NIL is another major difference between Power Five and mid-major programs, Nicholas Clark, the Altius NIL general manager at Coastal Carolina, said. Coastal Carolina is one of 42 NCAA Division I colleges affiliated with Altius Sports Partners, an organization that provides NIL consultation services to schools and companies around the country.
Clark said facilitating relationships with local businesses is pivotal for smaller schools’ NIL success.
“When it comes to recruitment, retention, education and engagement, you got to work to your strengths… If you think of the demographics, the size of the school and the location, that looks a lot different than it’s going to look in Columbia,” Clark said. “In my role as the general manager of NIL, what can I do to leverage the resources I do have and put our student-athletes in the best position to succeed?”
Emory said this strategy is important for a school like Winthrop that doesn't have money in its budget to hire NIL personnel for its athletic department's staff. He added that he believes recent changes in NIL legislation have been good for college athletics, specifically by helping student-athletes create professional images for themselves and become “capable brand marketers" with assistance from universities.
In some ways, however, these changes have continued an ongoing trend where “the rich get richer,” thus creating an even larger gap between Power Five and mid-major programs, Emory said.
“We still have the ability to put those measures in place, just not to the scale that South Carolina potentially could – which, again, is fine. That’s just the way college athletics works, and everyone at the mid-major level understands that,” Emory said. “Down here, we’re always looking to do more with less, and that’s kind of the operational standpoint that a lot of schools take.”
Despite this, Clark said a lack of resources should not stand in the way of smaller schools’ abilities to help student-athletes promote their brands.
“Every school is responsible for providing their student-athletes with a pathway to opportunity, so what you can’t make up for in personnel, you make up with resources,” Clark said. “There’s different ways to go about it. Will people’s budgets be able to cover the cost of that? (It) depends on who you’re talking to. However, there’s always a way to get it done.”
The future of NIL
Collegiate athletics has undergone significant change in recent years with conference realignment, the transfer portal and NIL. Despite the benefits H. 4957 provides South Carolina institutions and their student-athletes, lawmakers and athletic department personnel believe more action should be taken to regulate the NIL space and clearly define what the NCAA and individual institutions are allowed to do.
Rose said he would like to see athletic departments be allowed to create contractual agreements with their student-athletes to help smaller schools retain their best players. Without these contracts, Rose said college football, for example, could become “worse than the NFL” when it comes to tampering and other unsavory activities.
“I grew up in a time when a Wofford or a Winthrop could make a run in the NCAA basketball tournament. But now, if they find a diamond in the rough, the diamond leaves immediately,” Rose said. “It just seems backwards because, if this is going to become a business, there should be protections for the institutions.”
The NCAA’s and individual athletic departments' transitions into having a more business-like framework, and the role collectives play in that transition, is something Emory said he wants clarification about moving forward.
“You can say that the NCAA was created as a more socialistic environment, and we are now opening the gates for capitalism – free market, go out and do your thing,” Emory said. “Kind of clarifying at what point do those points meet because we at the institutions are operating under these quote-unquote ‘socialistic ideas,’ whereas a third party – collectives, boosters, X, Y and Z – are fully, ‘Go, go, go. Let’s make some money.’”
But Emory said any action taken to the "gray area" created by individual states’ NIL legislation will make the concept more black-and-white again.
“I ultimately think that any form of regulation is going to bring it further and further away from the ‘wild west’ to clearly define what is right (and) what is impermissible in these situations,” Emory said. “Now , with these... guidelines coming out, it’s definitely going to help it bring it to a more stable space, I think.”