UI’s new course offers students a chance to learn more about NIL

After decades of begging, arguing, and even some then-illegal activity, college athletes finally got what they so desperately wanted — and surely deserved.

Now in its fourth year since becoming a legal action, Name, Image, and Likeness, or NIL, has brought valuable opportunities for college athletes to be compensated for playing their respective sport. This includes earning money through commercials, brand deals, sponsorships, and endorsements as well as being paid directly by the school.

Several positives have followed as a result. The student-athletes can focus more on their sport and schoolwork and provide for their families. But the NIL era is still in its early stages, and besides those who are directly involved with a collegiate team, not many people outside of that are properly educated on the subject.

With that, the University of Iowa implemented a course called “NIL: Simulated Agency Experience” that allows non-athletes wanting to learn about the NIL space to do so through hands-on experience by working with voluntary student-athletes.

“I tried to create a course that would give students a taste of what actually representing student athletes in NIL deals is like,” said SAE professor Daniel Matheson. “My goal then by the end of the semester is that they will have learned a lot about what’s happening in the NIL space overall, and in addition, they will learn a little bit about what it’s like to represent athletes, and any sort of talent, in the pursuit of their professional goals.

“[The participating student] might want to be a sports agent, and this class gets them as close as they can without actually doing the real work for the athlete.”

Matheson is a Professor of Instruction and an Adjunct Professor in the College of Law while serving as the Director of the Sport and Recreation Management program. Last year, he approached the Iowa Athletics department with the idea of an NIL-based class and was given the green light to start up the course. This is the first semester in which SAE is being taught.

“This class is so different from other law classes because of the group activities and guest speakers,” SAE participant and law student Lauren Keating said. “Typical law classes have you read cases or other materials and a professor lectures at you for about an hour and 15 minutes while randomly calling on people to answer questions.

The class is based heavily on participation. Students are required to engage with guest speakers and be active in group projects and discussions.

“We just finished up having guest speakers and they were all very question based, so if we wanted to know something we needed to ask for it. Also, with our end of year project, we are working in groups, so every idea needs to be discussed and researched as a group before we do anything else.”

The three-credit course is listed on the university’s ICON website under SRM:4240 but has a restriction label attached to it. In order to join the course, students had to express to Matheson why they wanted to take his class, and from there he hand-picked his participants out of the pool.

Matheson designed it that way for two reasons: to make sure upper-level students who expressed interest had first dibs before they graduated, and to host a mix of different majors to draw different skill sets and viewpoints. That way, the students can learn from one another.

The 30-person class hosts students that are law majors, journalism majors, business majors, and everything in-between.

“I took this class because I want to become a sports lawyer in the future,” Keating said. “The tides with collegiate sports are moving so fast that new information and changes are happening every single day, so it’s important to learn as much as possible about the processes of NIL before we go out and work in the field.”

Through the first part of the course, Matheson welcomed several guest speakers to his class, from SWARM and the local sports marketing department at Hy-Vee to some of the bigger talent agencies in the field like William Morris Endeavor.

Along with the guest speakers is a group of Iowa student-athletes who aren’t registered for the course but voluntarily participate. That group includes men’s basketball’s Drew Thelwell, women’s gymnastics’ Adeline Klenin, women’s diving’s Makalya Hughbanks, spirit squad’s Mackenzie Beckmann, and women’s soccer’s Kelli McGroarty.

The students, split up into groups, compose NIL-based projects throughout the semester and will present them to their represented student-athletes towards the tail end of the class.

“I believe the athletes benefit because they have a group of people trying to help them,” Keating said. “While not all of our athletes will retain eligibility after this year, we actively work to find local or bigger companies they could consider working with in the future.

“Many student athletes especially in smaller sports aren’t taught what to do in terms of reaching out to brands, building their own brand, or negotiating their contracts, so one of the hopes of this class is we can present them with ideas to get them started so they have a better footing on where to start so they can jump start their personal brands,” she added.

This class is a very unique opportunity to learn about the new wave of collegiate sports. And for that reason, it will continue to take place every second semester for the foreseeable future as it’s gained substantial feedback just one semester into its existence.

Matheson had a vision when he created this course, and that vision goes well beyond what is taking place inside his classroom.

“Maybe in two, three, five, 10 years from now, I see some of the students from this class working maybe in the NIL space,” Matheson said “See some of these students that have maybe got their their initial inspiration, or saw a pathway for themselves into the NIL space in their careers and make that happen. That would be