To understand why and how, here is a quote from an article published in the New York Times, authored by David A. Fahrenthold and Billy Witz. “The upheaval has its roots in a Supreme Court decision and a handful of state laws that made it illegal in 2021 for the N.C.A.A. to continue its longstanding prohibition on athletes making money from endorsements. In dropping the ban, the N.C.A.A. assumed the result would be a way for star athletes to get endorsement deals, a cut of jersey sales, or money for acting as social media influencers — also known as “name, image, likeness” arrangements, or N.I.L. Instead, a very different model sprang up in parallel, one in which the collectives have effectively hijacked the N.I.L. system to circumvent the N.C.A.A.’s still-in-force ban on paying players to play by finding ways to get more money to more athletes. The collective system is “a pay-for-play scheme disguised as N.I.L.,” Tony Petitti, the commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, said at a Senate hearing this week. “We are concerned that management of college athletics is shifting away from the universities to collectives.” Read the full article here.