Beyond the Million-Dollar Headlines: What NIL Actually Looks Like for the Other 99%

Every conversation about name, image, and likeness seems to start at the top. As the 2026 college football season opens, the headline number belongs to Texas quarterback Arch Manning, whose On3 NIL valuation has been reported as high as $5.4 million, the largest figure attached to any college athlete in any sport. Miami quarterback Darian Mensah is reportedly set to receive $6.5 million. A handful of others clear the $2 million mark. These are the figures that define the public image of NIL: young athletes earning more than most NFL rookies before they have taken a professional snap.

They are also almost entirely unrepresentative of what NIL means for the overwhelming majority of college and high school athletes. And this offseason offered a sharp reminder of just how unstable even the very top of that market can be.

The Volatility at the Top

Manning is the cautionary tale. He entered the 2025 season carrying a reported $6.8 million valuation, the highest in college sports, as the presumptive face of a preseason No. 1 team. Ten months later, after Texas went 9-3 and missed the College Football Playoff, On3's confirmed-contract valuation for him had fallen to roughly $2.5 million, a drop of more than 60 percent. He never lost his starting job. The market simply repriced him, one uneven Saturday at a time.

That swing tells you something important about the top tier of NIL: it is built on marketability, hype, and a small number of large brand deals, and it can evaporate almost as quickly as it appears. Analysts have also noted that these headline valuations are estimates, often based on confirmed contracts that are notoriously difficult to track, rather than guaranteed paychecks. In other words, even the numbers everyone quotes come with heavy asterisks.

For the athlete outside the top 100, none of this is the relevant story anyway.

What NIL Looks Like for Almost Everyone Else

There are roughly half a million NCAA athletes, and hundreds of thousands more competing in high school and at levels below Division I. The vast majority will never sign a national brand deal, never appear on a valuation ranking, and never negotiate with a collective. For them, the meaningful version of NIL is not a seven-figure endorsement. It is the ability to earn modestly and directly from the community that already supports them.

That is the part of the market that has quietly grown into something substantial while the headlines chased the quarterbacks. A wave of athlete-focused platforms now exists specifically to help ordinary athletes participate, through fan subscriptions, small brand campaigns, and direct-to-fan sales, without needing fame or an agent.

NIL Club, a team-based platform used by a large base of college athletes, is one example of how this end of the market works in practice. Rather than routing money through a single star or a booster collective, its model lets fans support athletes and teams directly, and it distributes brand campaigns across entire rosters so that walk-ons and role players can participate alongside starters. It is a structurally different idea from the Manning-tier deals: instead of one athlete capturing an enormous valuation, many athletes earn smaller, steadier amounts from the people who actually follow them. Platforms like it illustrate where most real NIL activity happens, far below the headline numbers and much closer to the ground.

The same platforms are increasingly bringing national brand deals within reach of ordinary athletes, not just the stars. Through its brand-deals feature, NIL Club has connected athletes with companies including Amazon, SoFi, Subway, Coinbase, Uber Eats, and Ray-Ban, and industry coverage reports that more than 50,000 athletes have completed at least one brand deal through the platform. Crucially, many of these campaigns pay based on measurable results like sign-ups or sales rather than fame, which means an athlete does not need a huge following to take part. A Division II athlete with a few thousand engaged local followers can complete a real campaign for a recognizable brand, the kind of opportunity that, only a few years ago, existed exclusively for the athletes at the very top of the valuation charts.

Why the Distinction Matters

The gap between the headline market and the everyday one is not just a matter of scale. It shapes how athletes, parents, and fans understand what is possible.

When the only visible version of NIL is a $5 million quarterback, a high school volleyball player or a Division II swimmer can reasonably conclude that none of it applies to them. That impression is wrong, and it matters, because the everyday version of NIL, a few hundred or a few thousand dollars from an engaged local following, is both more achievable and more stable than the top of the market that dominates coverage. Manning's valuation can lose 60 percent in a season. A swimmer's relationship with her hometown supporters does not swing with the win-loss column.

There is also a fairness dimension that often gets lost. The athletes generating the most engagement per follower are frequently not the football and basketball stars at all. Women's sports figures and athletes in non-revenue programs regularly build tight, loyal communities, and platforms built around direct fan support tend to reward exactly that kind of connection rather than raw fame.

The Season Ahead

As college football returns and the valuation rankings get another round of attention, it is worth keeping the proportions straight. The Arch Mannings of the sport are real, and their deals are genuinely enormous, but they represent a tiny, volatile sliver of the NIL world. The larger and arguably more durable story is happening quietly among the hundreds of thousands of athletes earning modest, direct income from the communities that know them.

That is the version of NIL most athletes will actually live, and it is the one worth understanding as the sport enters another season of headlines about the few at the very top.