From lawsuits to federal government memos, controversy and confusion over name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights are raging throughout the NCAA — but Princeton and the rest of the Ivy League are staying out of it.
Last week, Trump’s Department of Education rescinded a fact sheet issued by the Biden administration stating that, per Title IX, NIL payments from schools must be distributed evenly between male and female athletes.
This back-and-forth won’t directly affect Princeton’s NIL policies because the Ivy League opted out of the settlement in House v. NCAA in January. The settlement allowed NCAA teams that opt in to pay athletes directly with money generated from their athletic departments — be it media rights, broadcast deals, or private donations — as long as it is below a cap of about $20 million. Since the Ivy League opted out of the settlement, those schools won’t have any direct payments to distribute.
Princeton and Ivy League athletic administrators alike have said that the focus of the Ivy League is on providing a balanced athletic-academic experience — a goal that the prioritization of revenue and attention in the House settlement would have disrupted.
Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris wrote in an email to players and coaches that the decision to opt out of the settlement “will continue to provide an educational intercollegiate athletics model that is focused on academic primacy and the overall student-athlete experience,” according to the Associated Press.
“At Princeton, varsity athletic programs, like our other extracurricular activities, exist for the benefit of the participating students, not the administration, donors, or alumni,” President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 wrote in a September 2024 blog post.
The Princeton athletics department did not provide a comment in time for publication. Last year, athletic director John Mack ’00 told The Daily Princetonian, “I don’t want student athletes on our rosters who are only here because we’re paying them.”
Bill Carter, an NIL educator and consultant, says he believes this anti-NIL attitude applies to the rest of the Ivy League, which is why the conference opted out of the House settlement. The league is the only Division I conference in the NCAA to do so.
“It doesn’t fit with [the Ivy League’s] mission,” Carter told the ‘Prince.’ “The athletic departments at the Ivy League schools are really run pretty closely aligned with the rest of the institution, and that can’t be said at [other conferences]. It would have been totally off brand to say we’re going to distribute revenue from the athletic department to the student athletes at Princeton, and we’re going to treat this segment of our community differently than we treat anybody else on campus.”
Indeed, athletes say there are some parts of athletics at Princeton that seem incompatible with a greater focus on NIL. While Princeton is one of three Ivy League schools to partner with Opendorse, an NIL marketplace, Greg Busch ’99, the Senior Associate Director of Athletics, said few deals were actually made.
AJ Barber ’25, a wide receiver on the football team, said that NIL opportunities on Princeton’s football team are somewhat minimal. He served as Princeton’s ambassador for XTECH Pads, lobbying the team to switch to the company’s shoulder pads. The campaign was unsuccessful, but he says he still got paid.
“I’m sure places on Nassau, where players can do NIL for them, would be very cool,” Barber said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “I think some of my teammates have done that. But it’s not like the big brand stuff that you see at the power four level. But I think it would definitely be cool to see more NIL in that way.”
Robyn Thompson ’24, a former member of Princeton’s women’s field hockey team, noted in an interview that “being a student athlete within the Ivy League and the time commitments that come with some of these partnerships is also potentially a barrier, and the reason that people are not necessarily able to do it.” Thompson was familiar with the NIL process but did not participate in any deals because she was an international student.
“It might be a lot harder in terms of academics, to actually be able to step out and dedicate the time to really pursuing these NIL deals and these partnerships to the extent that other athletes might be able to at other schools,” Thompson added, recalling one friend who would sometimes have to travel out of town for events as part of her NIL deals. She also said she didn’t think “Princeton would support their student athletes as well as other schools would in engaging in those ventures outside of just their normal athletics and academics.”
Christopher Brolley, an attorney who advises on NIL issues, told the ‘Prince’ that the House settlement limits the number of athletic roster spots a school can have. So by opting out, he said, Ivy League schools “are protecting the sports opportunities and retaining control of their own admissions.”
“They’re giving the opportunity for everyone to play,” he continued. “They’re not going to base their admissions decision now on what student athlete requires or needs the most money.”
While opting out could mean that talented athletes transfer to schools with more NIL opportunities, Brolley told the ‘Prince’ that the roster restrictions in the House settlement “are directly impacting women’s and Olympic sports, which is what I understand the Ivy Leagues are most successful at, what the Ivies are known for.”
In fact, according to Thilo Kunkel, a professor at Temple University who has studied the business of NIL, last week’s change “may actually be beneficial to Princeton’s recruitment” because “talented female student athletes who would have been paid by other universities” under the Biden administration may be more attracted to Ivy League schools that aren’t directly paying any of their athletes.
For the schools opting into direct payments, Kunkel warned, “that money has to come from somewhere … So this will likely mean that there will be many athletic programs across the country that will be on the chopping board” as schools divert more funding towards the most revenue-generating teams — namely, football and men’s basketball.
Some Ivy League athletes, including former Columbia women’s basketball star Abbey Hsu, have criticized the conference for opting out of the House settlement. But Barber is glad that Princeton won’t be paying athletes to play because it would “take away from the overall college atmosphere,” and he said he hopes it stays that way in the future.
“I think the integrity of Princeton athletics would be compromised if it started paying its athletes,” Barber said. “I’m glad that I never had to experience having a teammate get paid a million dollars and someone else not. I’m sure it would definitely cause some tensions within football at least.”
Annie Rupertus is a head News editor emerita for the ‘Prince’ from Philadelphia, Pa. who has covered activism and campus governance.
Charlie Roth is a senior News writer and editor emeritus focusing on local, state, and national politics.
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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