Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman has a Bone to Pick with NIL Rules

NIL, which stands for Name, Image, Likeness, remains a hot topic in 2025 amidst an ever-changing landscape for college athletes.

NIL allows athletes to earn money through endorsements, social media, and other business ventures as a result of NCAA rules introduced in 2021.

This has not been without controversy. For years, the NCAA has asked lawmakers to address problems that have arisen as a result of NIL. And now, with a Republican-controlled Congress, that might happen.

Wyoming representative Harriet Hageman made her thoughts on the matter clear, captioning a video she has since posted to Facebook and X: "Under current NIL rules, someone like Josh Allen, one of the greatest players of all time, can get lured away from a school like Wyoming and set a player’s education and their team back years. I want to protect both college athletes and college sports programs."

This is a sentiment seemingly being echoed by other Republican lawmakers including Florida representative Gus Bilirakis, the chairman of the House subcommittee who said, "We need to save college sports as we know it."

There are currently several other lawmakers working on different versions of an NIL bill.

Earlier this year the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said that if all student athletes became employees, a majority of college programs would disappear, particularly those at small colleges and in Olympic sports. "Because the money is just not there."

An article from ESPN articulates:

"College sports officials fear that the industry's richest schools will soon have an unsustainable competitive advantage if antitrust lawsuits prevent the NCAA from enforcing regulations that create an equal playing field when it comes to recruiting. While the pending $2.8 billion dollar settlement of the House v. NCAA case would free the college sports industry from past alleged antitrust violations, it does not provide protection from future legal challenges to the spending caps and other restrictions included as part of the settlement."

"Many in college sports believe that an unregulated market will inevitably push the small group of schools that generate most of the industry's revenue to sever ties with the rest of their Division I peers. A split could create less interesting matchups for fans and jeopardize the ability of smaller schools to keep funding sports at their current levels."