AROUND NIL | Everyone agrees NIL is broken. No one agrees on the fix.

Congress still can’t agree on how to fix NIL

March 11, 2026—U.S. senators spent March 10 in Washington trying to answer a question college athletics still hasn’t: how to fix an NIL era that almost everyone agrees is broken, just not in the same way. Meeting under the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee banner, lawmakers held a roundtable on the future of NIL and what, if anything, Congress should do to reshape how college athletes are compensated.

Committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) set the tone early, casting the conversation as an effort to “fix college sports” and zeroing in on the transfer portal as a primary culprit, including an example of a player who lost 56 credit hours in a transfer and saw graduation pushed back by years. Democrats came with a different approach. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) argued, saying several of the proposed “fixes” look less like reform and more like an effort to limit what athletes in revenue sports can earn while everyone else continues to cash in.

Proposed solutions include standardized NIL contracts, stronger transfer portal disclosure rules, and the SAFE Act, which would formalize certain athlete rights and cap agent fees at 5%. No bills have cleared Congress.

Cassidy has asked stakeholders to submit input by April 10, with plans to use that feedback to draft legislation and schedule additional hearings later this year.

Quarterback LaNorris Sellers, one of South Carolina's highest-paid college athletes, at the center of a statehouse debate over NIL transparency | Sipa USA/Alamy Live News

Does the public have the right to know what state schools pay their athletes?

March 16, 2026—South Carolina is at the center of a growing debate over transparency in college sports, and a governor's veto may be the most telling moment yet.

Gov. Henry McMaster rejected legislation last week that would have shielded NIL and revenue-sharing contracts at public universities from Freedom of Information Act requests. The bill, driven by athletic directors at USC, Clemson, and Coastal Carolina, passed the state House 111-2 in just three days, without ever going through a committee.

Their argument: if rival programs know what a star athlete is earning, they'll simply offer more to lure them away.

McMaster wasn’t sold. He said protecting individual athlete contracts makes sense but blocking the public from knowing how much a school spends on each sport goes too far. "The people's right to know extends to every dollar that their colleges and universities choose to spend," he wrote.

Wisconsin lawmakers passed a near-identical bill this week, with an even broader records exemption, sending it to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for a decision.

As public universities can now pay athletes directly under the House v. NCAA settlement, the debate over who gets to see those numbers is playing out in state legislatures across the country.