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Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders—who starred for the Colorado Buffaloes—was one of many familiar faces at the second annual David Njoku Celebrity Softball Game, held at Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake, Ohio.

Njoku, the Browns’ Pro Bowl tight end, captained Team Njoku against Team Haden, led by former NFL cornerback Joe Haden.

The event featured a star-studded lineup of professional athletes, influencers, and local celebrities.

WWE superstars Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano took the field, along with internet personalities like Granny Smith and Kenny Brooks.

Fellow Browns players in attendance alongside Sanders included wide receiver Jerry Jeudy, wide receiver Cedric Tillman, safety Grant Delpit, cornerback MJ Emerson, as well as other NFL standouts like New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers and Arizona Cardinals linebacker Mack Wilson.

As expected, Sanders drew a strong crowd and plenty of cheers from fans—many eager to catch a glimpse of Cleveland’s high-profile rookie quarterback.

Before the game, chants rang out from young fans in the stands: “You’re the next [Tom] Brady!”

Another moment that quickly went viral showed a young fan shouting confidently from the bleachers: “You’re QB1! Nobody else but you! You’re the GOAT!”

Sanders smiled at the love. “I need him to be my motivator,” he joked. “I need to listen to him every day.”

The kids of Cleveland want 12 as qb1 pic.twitter.com/cZQ8k09Ko8

— Dalvinthetruth (@dalvinthetruth) June 20, 2025

The former Colorado standout also used the moment to acknowledge his recent speeding citations, doing so during a lighthearted portion of the livestream with Cleveland rapper Doe Boy.

“He’s just a regular kid; he didn’t do nothing wrong,” Doe Boy said, defending Sanders.

Sanders didn’t dodge the topic.

“I’ve made some wrong choices,” he admitted with a laugh. “I can own up to it. . . . I learn from them.”

Shedeur Sanders said this about his speeding violation:

“I’ve made some wrong choices, I can own up to it—I learn from them” pic.twitter.com/RUTa1IJ20f

— GUCCE (@gucceCU) June 19, 2025

MORE: Ex-Colorado Buffaloes Defensive Coordinator Lands New Job In SEC

MORE: Michael Irvin Confident Deion Sanders Will Bounce Back From Health Issues

MORE: Shedeur Sanders 101 MPH Speeding Ticket A ‘Learning Experience’ For Cleveland Rookie?

Earlier this month, Sanders was ticketed twice for speeding in Ohio—once on June 6 and again on June 16, reportedly reaching 101 mph in a 60-mph zone.

However, Sanders seized this public opportunity to take responsibility for his decisions.

From there, it was all about fun—and when the chance arrived, Sanders delivered at the plate, too.

In his first at-bat, Sanders sent a fly ball into shallow left field that dropped for a hit, bringing in a run after MJ Emerson escaped a rundown at home plate.

Shedeur Sanders looking like Pop’s #NFL #dawgpound  #SkoBuffs
pic.twitter.com/SbHr4nA4Rr

— Ossacin’s Ducktail (@OssacinDucktail) June 20, 2025

Sanders advanced to second on the play, good for an RBI double on the unofficial stat sheet.

The moment offered a brief, entertaining glimpse of the two-sport athleticism he shares with his father: former Major League Baseball player, NFL Hall of Famer, and now Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders.

More than just a showcase of skills, Njoku’s charity event gave Sanders another opportunity to build chemistry with his teammates, connect with Browns fans, and continue settling into the Cleveland spotlight.

The former Colorado quarterback played in the spotlight throughout his entire college career, ultimately leading the Buffaloes to nine wins in 2024. Colorado won 10 games in 2016, but Sanders led the Buffaloes to one of their best seasons in recent memory.

While Sanders navigates a couple of early missteps off the field, it’s clear the rookie quarterback is still winning over Cleveland—building trust through play, personality, and presence.

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You guys probably recall the surprise when we all learned just how much Cooper Flagg made this past season at Duke, around $28 million.

He’s an outlier of course, but the trend is unmistakable: income is going up across the board.

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That’s a bit of problem and not just for the NCAA. Turns out it’s causing a global…well, let’s call it a game drain.

What’s happening, in essence, is that NCAA players are suddenly making a lot more money than international players, and the employers of said international players don’t like it one bit.

Philippe Ausseur, the President of France’s National Basketball League, calls it looting, saying this:

“Given the number of players approached, about fifteen of whom have signed up, we can call it looting. The colleges are casting their net wide, even in Pro B, and are dispossessing us of a certain number of our key players without us being able to react.

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“What took us by surprise were the amounts. We were expecting big contracts worth $350,000, but it’s $2 million…We were expecting half a dozen players to be approached, but it’s more than triple that…We’ve heard of agents trying to get clubs to sign certificates to demonstrate that their players are still amateurs. The situation remains unclear.”

Well first of all, looting seems like a very Gallic response to competition. Secondly, they didn’t complain when sub-NBA American players left college ball for European paychecks.

All that said, he does have a point: in a very short period of time, the NCAA has emerged as the second-best league in the world, the money keeps getting better and there are some real perks: you can get an education if you want, you get access to first-class coaching, facilities, training, nutrition and equipment. And you’re on TV all the time and thus on the NBA’s radar.

And while this appears to be less of a problem than it was in recent years, at least in Europe, there was a time when players spent way too much time trying to get paid. This has apparently been a problem for American players in China too. It’s less likely to be the case for NCAA players, which could also be a factor.

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AI-assisted summaryThe House vs. NCAA settlement allows direct payment to student-athletes and establishes a revenue sharing model.A College Sports Commission will oversee NIL activities and a clearinghouse called NIL Go will review deals over $600.Participating institutions, primarily Power 5 schools, must adhere to a revenue sharing cap and report NIL deals.The world of college recruiting with name, image, and likeness deals has seemed lawless and ungoverned since it initially became legal in 2021.

Now, power conference schools are allowed to directly pay their student-athletes following the settlement of the House vs. NCAA antitrust cases.

The settlement, which was approved on June 13 by a federal judge in California, sets the stage for a tidal wave of confusion as schools, student-athletes, and their families navigate the uber-legislated college athletics ecosystem.

With the passing of the settlement also comes the formation of the College Sports Commission, which will become the new enforcement arm of college athletics.

The NCAA, along with the defendant conferences, released a 36-page Question & Answer package to address many of the common concerns and hurdles people are experiencing following the settlement.

Here are some of the biggest questions to how college athletics will operate pertaining to NIL under the new House settlement, and how the NCAA answered them in their document, which they released shortly after the settlement was approved:

Who is affected by the House Settlement?

The House settlement forced the NCAA to pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next decade to any student-athlete that competed from 2016 to present day.

Looking forward, the House settlement will have an influence on every Division I athletic program, its administrators and coaching staffs, current and prospective student-athletes, their families, and fans as well.

Any schools named in the settlement or intend on joining by this year’s June 30 cutoff date are referred to as “Participating Institutions.”Who are Participating Institutions?All current members of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and ACC are part of the new revenue-sharing model.What do Participating Institutions have to do now?The NCAA makes clear the obligations schools have following the settlement, including:Ensure that any additional payments or benefits being provided comply with the benefit cap and cap-related rules, policies and procedures.Report to the cap management reporting system (CAPS):All licenses between the institution and its student-athletes for name, image andlikeness; andAny other payments or benefits provided beyond what was permitted by NCAA Division I rules as of October 7, 2024, assuming such benefits are otherwise permitted by NCAA rules.Report all additional benefits that count against the benefits cap to CAPS and complete the annual attestation by September 1 after the close of each academic year.Adhere to the established roster limits.Agree that the designated enforcement entity (i.e., College Sports Commission) has theauthority to enforce NCAA Bylaws adopted as part of the settlement (e.g., roster limits,additional payments and benefits and noninstitutional NIL).Is there a cap to how much revenue a school can share?Yes. Schools are permitted to distribute up to 22-percent of the average revenue between the Power-5 conferences from media rights, ticket sales, and sponsorships. This is known as the revenue sharing cap or benefits cap, and is the maximum dollar amount a school may provide to its student-athletes during an academic year.What is the revenue sharing cap under the new House Settlement?The benefits cap for 2025-26 is set for $20.5 million and is expected to rise. A 4% bump is expected every year for the first three years, with a full recalculation after year four.How is the House Settlement’s revenue sharing cap calculated?First, participating schools from the five conferences (plus Notre Dame) enter their revenue into eight categories; ticket sales, input revenue from participation in away games, media rights revenue, NCAA distributions and grants, non-media conference distributions, direct revenue from participation in bowl games (as well as conference distributions from bowl revenues), and athletics department revenues from sponsorships, royalties, licensing agreements and advertisements.The cap is then found by pulling 22% from the sum of the revenue generated by the eight defined categories.Do NIL deals count towards the revenue sharing cap?Yes and no. NIL deals paid from a source outside of the school, or a third-party, does not count towards the revenue sharing cap. Other funds distributed from student assistance funds or third-party grants/awards are also exempt from the benefits cap up to a certain amount.However, if a player is receiving funds directly from a school for NIL purposes, that money will be counted against the benefits cap.What money counts against the revenue sharing cap under the House SettlementAny money a player receives directly from a schools for NIL uses is applicable to the benefits cap. Any other direct payment or additional benefits a player or their family receives that is not exempted by NCAA rules is also fair game.Academic and graduation awards (like Alston Awards) also count towards the cap, but only up to $2.5 million. The same is true for athletically-related financial aid that exceeds the 2024-25 academic year limits.How will NIL deals be regulated after the House Settlement?All NIL deals, from all student-athletes, that are worth more than $600 must be processed and approved by the new clearinghouse, NIL Go.

NIL Go is run by Deloitte, a major consulting firm. It’s works as an online portal that student-athletes, schools, and third-party payees will use to verify that an NIL deal meets the criteria of a true third-party deal.

All players must submit deals to NIL Go within five business days of execution of the contract. From there, Deloitte and NIL Go will determine if the deal meets “valid business purposes” for an NIL contract.

Who is enforcing the new rules under the House Settlement?

The College Sports Commission will oversee NIL Go. The CSC was created by the major conferences to act as a self-policing arm of the NIL era. The CSC, headed up by former MLB executive Bryan Seeley, will determine if schools break any rules and then determine the appropriate punishments.

Seeley answers directly only to the Power-4 commissioners that hired him to police their conferences.

How will NIL Go judge if a deal is valid?

When the player agrees to the NIL contract or payment terms, it must include the promotion or endorsement of goods or services provided to the general public for profit. Otherwise, it is not a valid third-part deal and will be rejected by the clearinghouse.

Deloitte recently shared data that 70% of past NIL payments from boosters and collectives would have been denied under the current scrutiny.

How do multiyear agreements count against the revenue sharing cap?

Additional payments promised in multiyear agreements are counted against a Participating Institution’s benefits cap in the year that the payments and/or benefits are provided.

For example, if a player signs a two-year agreement for $100,000 through 2025-27, the first $100,000 would count towards the school’s cap in 2025-26, and the second $100,000 would count against the 2026-27 cap.

If the contract includes incentives, the total amount of incentives will count against the cap of the year that they promised. If the player fails to meet the criteria for the incentive, the amount is removed from the cap at the end of the year.

Who is a third-party under the House Settlement, and who isn’t?

Because where a money originates from decides whether or not it counts towards the cap, determining true third-parties is more essential than ever.

Associated entities/individuals are anyone that is known to have promoted a school’s athletics program, created or identified NIL opportunities, assisted in recruiting, or contributed more than $50,000 over their lifetime to a school (for individuals).

Are boosters considered associated individuals under the House Settlement?

Boosters are not automatically considered associated individuals. However, any booster or “Representative of Athletic Interests” defined by NCAA Bylaw 13.02.16 would automatically become an associated individual by the definitions set forth in the House Settlement and NCAA bylaws.

How do transfers and buyouts work under the new House Settlement?

Every contract is different, but the principles will be the same throughout. If a player transfers out of a school before the end of their contract, the school is only obligated to pay the terms of the contract that are valid up to the date they enter the portal. Any money that would have been owed to the player that transferred out can be removed from the benefits cap.

Take for example, a player that signs a deal that pays $100,000 per year over the course of two years. If the player transfers out before the start of the second year of the contract, the school is off the hook for the back end of the contract because it was never owed or due.

If there is a buyout clause in a player’s contract, the school that the player is transferring into must pay the entirety of the buyout to the school that the player departed from. The buyout also counts against the paying school’s cap, but cannot be added to the receiving school’s cap.

Elise Cooper will go to the Olympics one day.

The fastest high school sprinter in Maryland is one of the most promising racers the state has produced in recent years, setting a national record for the indoor 300-meter dash in February. She’s headed to Texas this fall on scholarship, and her dream of qualifying for the 2028 Games looms in the distance.

But, in the modern era of sports, with the money that floods the landscape, other goals arrive much faster — faster than a teenager is usually prepared for.

On her 18th birthday, Cooper signed her first name, image and likeness deal with Puma, essentially becoming a pro sprinter for one of the world’s biggest sports apparel companies on her first day of legal adulthood. Even before she signed, the outfitter had sent boxes of gear to her home in Owings Mills — all the free shoes, shorts and sweats the McDonogh School student could have imagined streaming through her door.

There was only one catch. Until the company announced the deal, she had to keep one of the most exciting things ever to happen in her career a secret from her closest friends.

For nearly three months this spring, the knowledge burned within her chest. At track practice, her teammates would notice her head-to-toe wardrobe from Puma, sniffing a deal was in the works.

Cooper’s strategy? Deny, deny, deny.

“I was low-key gaslighting them,” Cooper said. “I would just tell them, ‘I like wearing the stuff.’ It was longer than I thought. Way longer.”

In April, Puma finally made public what the Cooper family kept to themselves for what felt like an eon — Cooper was the company’s first high school sprinter signed to an NIL deal, a landmark move in a brand-new market. Only a few years ago, such young athletes would never have been allowed to profit off their athletic careers — and also compete collegiately — in the name of protecting the American curiosity formerly known as “amateurism.”

It’s a new day for athletes and their families, who for the first time have the ability to cash in on NIL agreements that pay off years of hard work, even if they’re teenagers in high school. But it’s also a new, potentially treacherous marketplace with few regulations and even fewer experts who can give good advice.

For nearly two years, the Coopers considered various deals from some of the biggest companies in sports, holding out past offers of free gear, of flights to national meets and the prestige of being one of the first high schoolers to get signed.

Danielle Cooper — Elise’s mother, whom she lovingly calls her “mom-ager” — consulted dozens of parents, coaches, lawyers and industry pros in an effort not to get the most profitable deal for her daughter but the one that made the most long-term sense. Even the people she asked knew mostly one corner of the business. Almost no one is evaluating the bigger picture of a rapidly evolving landscape. What is a caring parent to do?

“Basically, no one knows,” Danielle Cooper said. “Even the people you think should know don’t really know. It’s really hard to go on.”

An uncharted economic frontier

It has been less than four years since NIL deals were permitted by the NCAA, a moment that stands as a starting pistol in a race toward economic chaos. Although the new system corrects flaws of the amateurism model by distributing more money into the pockets of the athletes who generate it, the clandestine nature and shadowy rules of the marketplace defy easy understanding for the families caught in the swirl. Especially for Olympic or so-called “non-revenue” sports.

Bill Carter, the founder of Student Athlete Insights, hears NIL stories and questions all day long from families who haven’t thought much about the money before. A family of a highly rated lacrosse recruit recently went on a college visit during which an NIL collective offered their child $30,000 to enroll at that university.

The family had been largely considering other factors: academics, coaching staff, the program’s track record. Suddenly, they were ambushed by new questions.

Is $30,000 a good deal? Should we go to other schools and ask what their NIL offers are? Could we negotiate more money? Would that be too pushy?

“They left stunned,” Carter said. “They didn’t know whether it was the deal of a lifetime or an insult.”

While deciding whether to accept tens of thousands of dollars may be a good predicament to face, the families of these elite athletes are increasingly finding themselves in these positions. Markets have stabilized somewhat for Division I football and basketball players, and parents can more easily find what might constitute a fair NIL deal based on the school and the position their child plays.

But in track the field of top-flight talent is so small — Carter estimates as little as 0.02% of even NCAA track and field athletes draw significant NIL interest — there isn’t any sort of conventional wisdom for how these deals should work.

Prep track meets are dominated by a few shoe companies, particularly Nike and New Balance, which annually run competing meets they each call “nationals.” Elise is running this weekend in the New Balance Nationals at Penn. She’ll be a top competitor in the 200 and 400 meters — largely because it’s easier to drive to Philadelphia than it is to fly to Eugene, Oregon, where Nike stages its event.

The first NIL deals the Cooper family heard about were stipends, around $1,000 or so, from these companies to cover the cost of travel and lodging for their big meets, drawing elite competition into the field. These are typically accompanied by flattering social media posts and, of course, complimentary gear.

For a teenager, a pair of free shoes is a sweet siren song. Elise figured she should start her strides into the NIL market by taking one of the short-term agreements. Danielle was not as convinced, especially after talking to a family friend who has worked as a sports agent.

“It was my mom who talked to other people and made the decision to hold out,” Elise said. “I kinda wanted stuff now, but I started to understand more after doing more research. NIL’s always evolving, so I’ll never fully understand it.”

Confusing by design

The confusion around NIL deals, especially at the high school level, is not by accident. It’s by design.

The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association offers a seven-page NIL guidance that has one key rule: When an athlete makes a deal, they cannot be wearing their high school uniform or use content captured from high school competitions. The regulations mainly serve to keep the MPSSAA separate from the economic frenzy.

Carter said that is a common approach by high school associations across the country. They are most concerned with keeping themselves, and their intellectual property, apart from the NIL chase — what he describes as a legal “moat” around the schools. The list of “do-nots” can help the associations, but it rarely offers much help to families.

“The conversations people frequently have around NIL are almost entirely viewed through compliance or almost entirely viewed through seizing the opportunity — but those conversations rarely converge,” Carter said. “It’s so rare they come together, even though that would benefit the athlete the most.”

The way anyone learns anything about NIL is by exhaustively asking around. Not everyone is lucky enough to have Danielle Cooper as a mom or Owings Mills Track Club coach Michael Ray as a supporting resource.

Ray and the Coopers made it their mission to get as much guidance as possible. They talked to Quincy Wilson, the Bullis School standout who won a relay gold medal at 16 last year in Paris (he signed with New Balance). They spoke with the Whittaker family, whose daughters Juliette and Isabella both went to the Olympics last year. They spoke to coaches and employees affiliated with brands, trying to figure out what the structure of a fruitful long-term deal would look like.

But even knowing the framework (not necessarily the dollar value, which can be hard to fish for, even among friends) of some of these deals helped only somewhat. In track, value can be extremely subjective, and even more so for a high schooler who, although she has run in the Olympic Trials, has not captured the international success that others with deals already have on their résumés.

“Because it hasn’t become commonplace, you’re really setting the journey that’s brand new,” Ray said. “There’s no standard deal. They might have an idea of what your value might be, you might have a totally different idea, but there’s no template. It’s hard being the first.”

Athletes and their families are not the only ones taking timid steps into the market. The brands themselves have spent the last few years trying to figure out the best way to get in on high schoolers, too.

José (pronounced “yo-say”) van der Veen, Puma’s global head of product line management, ran middle distances in her native Netherlands before going to the University of Texas El Paso in the late 1990s. She had a small regional deal with Puma that she had to give up because of NCAA rules — “I was a little bit bummed at the time,” she said — so she appreciates how quickly the circumstances have changed.

Puma fancies itself a youthful and energetic brand, capitalizing on the colorful personalities of gold medal-winning sprinters like Usain Bolt and Julien Alfred as its spokespeople. While Nike and other brands were quick to jump into exploring high school NIL deals, Puma was more circumspect. There were so many differing state regulations, so few certainties in investing in athletes so young.

“It’s uncharted,” van der Veen said. “For our in-house lawyers, it’s a space we want to be fair and be a little cautious. But the market, that’s where it’s moving to. You obviously have to go there because other brands are going there.”

Elise Cooper was a good candidate for Puma because she’s fast, first and foremost. But it’s also no accident that the brand wanted a candidate with the kind of support system Elise has in her corner.

Her parents were both athletes, and both her sisters are track stars, too (twin sister Elena is heading to Stanford, while older sister Ella competes for Harvard). She’s competed for Owings Mills Track Club under Ray for more than a decade, and Ivy League schools recruited her for her academic prowess before she committed to the Longhorns.

With high school athletes especially, companies want good long-term investments when they bring a teenager into the fold.

“The line to become professional athletes, it’s not linear,” van der Veen said. “Elise seems to have a very good support network around her. If she gets injured, if something happens, she’s smart enough to figure out it won’t define her. … At the highest level, the talent of these athletes eventually becomes pretty similar. It comes down to how mentally tough you can be.”

How a deal came together

The day Elise Cooper set a national record was unusual not because there was some electric feeling in the air leading up to her run — it was the opposite.

Cooper was at The Circuit in Philadelphia on Feb. 28, the day before the meet started in earnest. In the video, there is almost no one in the stands. She was racing against her friend Sydney Sutton from the Bullis School.

Cooper came into the race hoping for a personal record, but she did not imagine smashing Shawnti Jackson’s record by more than three-tenths of a second — a massive gap in the blink-length margins of sprinting.

“I guess I felt fast,” she said. “But I looked at the clock and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’”

Although Cooper prides herself on her ability to perform under pressure, one of her best runs ever came in one of the most low-stakes races of her career. But the days of racing in front of empty stands are numbered, and even more is on the line now that she’s under her first pro contract.

Track deals, maybe even more than those in other sports, are laden with incentives. Athletes get bonuses for reaching PRs, for clocking under certain times, for winning big meets. Although the Coopers did not share all details of Elise’s contract with The Banner, her deal with Puma — as well as future extensions she hopes to sign — have some of these incentives.

The unusual thing about track deals, however, is also the potentially hazardous piece: Sometimes, athletes who get hurt or don’t meet specific goals end up giving money back to their sponsors. Ray has seen it happen with other athletes he’s coached.

There are so many inherent tensions with signing track stars in their teens, it can be hard to decipher what kind of business arrangement makes sense.

“You at least have to look at it with an eye toward the future and what the individual athlete might accomplish,” Ray said. “A good deal in 2025 might not be a good deal in 2026 if you go to college and set the world on fire.”

Trying to be mindful of all of these factors, the Coopers sought a deal with a company that could mature over time. Puma wasn’t the only brand they considered. They liked On Running, a relative upstart from Switzerland founded in 2010, but the company didn’t have as long a track record with sprinters as Puma did. Ultimately, the relationships with the company and the Puma spikes themselves helped seal the Coopers’ decision to sign.

“A lot of people were saying, ‘This is the shoe she’s going to run in if she goes to the Olympics in 2028,’” Danielle said. “So that got in my head, and I was like, ‘Well I really do like On as a brand.’ But then … you’re gonna have to wear that shoe.”

The red carpet treatment from Puma felt particularly special for the Coopers, who traveled to the company’s American headquarters in Boston together. Elise tried out new gear, saw shoes in development that won’t be released for years, and had her feet closely measured for potential custom work down the line.

Puma is a Formula 1 racing sponsor, and Elise (who is a huge fan of F1) could be attending the Grand Prix in Texas in October as a special guest of the brand. A flight to the company’s world headquarters in Germany is sometime in the future.

But with all the perks comes pressure. Danielle has emphasized to Elise that she has to start thinking of track in more serious terms. No late nights cavorting in her friends’ hotel rooms before a big race. Although Elise will wear Nike gear when she competes for Texas under the school apparel deal, she’s contractually obligated to wear Puma at all other events (Ray bought Puma gear for himself as a show of solidarity).

For the previous 10 years, track was Elise’s passion. She still loves it, but now it’s her job.

“I think, when she saw the contract,” Danielle said, “it was when she realized, ‘OK, this is the real deal.’”

Everything on the line

Since she was 7, the sound of the starting gun has always given Elise a jolt.

It’s a little burst of fear that has never fully gone away — a tic that annoyed Elise when her mom pointed it out to me. “OK, first of all, that wasn’t even relevant,” she said, rolling her eyes in Danielle’s direction.

Danielle dotes on her daughters, and while Elise sometimes teases that the parenting style can feel over the top — Danielle has a running gag that she will buy an RV next year to drive to her daughters’ various meets — she ultimately embraces her mom’s dedication to her career. On her notes app on her phone, there’s a long to-do list of things she wants Danielle to accomplish.

“Not even halfway finished,” Elise playfully jabbed. “Wow, look at that.”

As much as she can push back on her mom’s devotion, she deeply appreciates the fact she probably would have never landed the deal with Puma without that level of diligence. Having a parent who can do this much legwork is a luxury not every athlete has.

Carter said the one piece of advice he would give every family trying to navigate the NIL market is to have patience. If a deal is on the table, there’s a good chance it will stay there for weeks or months. He estimated 90% of the regrets he hears from people are that they pounced too quickly.

“I would tell anyone to slow down and think about the ramifications of it before you sign it,” he said. “Spend a little bit of time thinking about who might help you: an attorney, someone to review the contract, a financial adviser. Get their input, and move through the process slowly.”

The market could help athletes and families by stabilizing and adding regulation. As the NCAA moves into revenue sharing, there’s a sense that NIL will become less important to the overall economics of sports — and companies would welcome some corralling from the Wild West the space is now.

It reminds van der Veen of the chaos in the late 2010s when “super spikes” hit racing and led to records all over getting slashed. Over the next few years, regulating bodies stepped in, other companies caught up and the field evened out again. She hopes the forces overseeing NIL in the NCAA and high schools have a similar flattening effect soon.

“I know the coaches are getting together right now, saying, ‘Hey, we really need to protect these Olympic sports,’” she said. “I really think, in the next couple of months, you’ll see pushback against the rules, more regulation of it. It will get more established and clearer.”

But it’s also likely that elite track athletes like Elise Cooper will always be a kind of outlier, that there may never be one template for the best deal or partnership that makes the most sense or carries the least risk. There may be less than a dozen high schoolers in any given year with the talent to attract contracts from big companies, and their families will always have steep learning curves in the short window that such deals are available.

What helps the Coopers is how independent Elise is when it comes to the races. She warms up and prepares on her own, mentally envisioning the race — tamping down her quickening pulse as she awaits that sharp bang of the starting gun that has never quite lost its intimidating bite.

“The difference between her and other athletes for me is she’s always able to get race ready on her own,” Danielle said. “She’s never needed me for the race. She’s always been independent in her preparation.”

There’s more on the line now than ever for Cooper, an axiom for her career from here until (at least) she shoots for Olympic gold in 2028. But the list of goals she has are all about her PRs — not about her salary, college or world titles or even earning all the free shoes in the world.

That’s why those around Elise see the Puma contract not as the conclusion to a saga but merely another step. That’s what everyone is hoping for.

“You see when the kids get serious about it and what that means for the sacrifices they make for themselves,” Ray said. “Usually the motivator is something beyond money. They really want to be the best of the best.

“Elise,” he added, “is one of those people.”

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