NIL Library / NIL-021
Congress Is Writing the NIL Rules. Parents, Read This.
The U.S. Senate just moved a bill that shapes the future of every athlete in this country, and not one high schooler was in the room. I work with young athletes, so here is my honest take: the most important thing for a sports parent in this news is not the bill itself, it is what the bill quietly admits is already happening to kids younger than the ones it covers.
On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation passed the Protect College Sports Act by a bipartisan vote of 19 to 9, sending it to the full Senate. This is real movement on the rules that govern name, image, and likeness.
What the bill actually does
The Protect College Sports Act codifies athletes' rights to earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness, writes scholarship and healthcare protections into law, protects women's and Olympic sports, and, in the Committee's own words, "reins in predatory agents." It was introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell, Ted Cruz, Eric Schmitt, and Chris Coons. Senator Cantwell said the bill stands "on behalf of 500,000 athletes who are seeing their future opportunities dimmed."
The support is broad. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee endorsed it, along with the NFL, MLB, and the NBA. As of that day, 267 colleges and universities across 49 states and D.C. had publicly backed it. This is not a fringe idea. This is the establishment trying to put guardrails on a marketplace that grew faster than anyone planned for.
The part that matters to a high school family
Here is the part to sit with. This bill is about college sports. High school athletes were not part of it. They were not in the room. But the problem the bill is trying to fix does not start in college. It starts earlier.
ESPN reported on this in February 2026. Coaches and administrators across the country described a wave of agents and middlemen who carve out a cut between the money and the athlete, and they said high school athletes are actually more at risk than college athletes. The reason is simple: high schoolers lack the support and structure of a university compliance office, and a kid is often the only student at their school weighing an offer, with no point of comparison.
The numbers nobody wants to read out loud
According to that ESPN reporting, these middlemen, frequently not certified agents or even attorneys, were described taking cuts of 20 to 25 percent. A real agent typically earns a fraction of that. In a December survey of 1,000 college athletes, 18 percent said someone helped them with NIL deals while they were still in high school, and about 67 percent of those said they agreed to give that person a percentage of their earnings.
One Texas high school player, Draden Fullbright, said a man who started working with him in ninth grade later demanded 25 percent of a roughly $36,000 deal before he had seen a dollar. Ninth grade. That is the detail I keep coming back to.
Why the word "predatory" matters
The government does not put a word like predatory into a piece of legislation unless the problem is real and already happening. So the headline for a parent is not "a bill passed." The headline is that the people who watch this world closely think young athletes need protecting, and your kid is younger than the ones they are talking about.
What this means for your athlete
Here is the shift I want every parent to make. The rules for this entire world are being written right now, in Washington, by people who have never met your kid. You cannot control that. So control the part that is actually yours.
Every one of these middlemen is selling the same thing: access to your kid's name and your kid's audience. They only have something to sell because your athlete built something worth representing in the first place. The families who understand their athlete's name and following early do not need a stranger to discover their kid, because they already own that relationship themselves. You do not need an agent in ninth grade. You need a foundation: clean photos, a real story, consistency, and an adult in the room who reads before anyone signs.
The rules are going to keep changing. The brand you own does not.
Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (June 18, 2026); supporting reporting from ESPN (February 2026). This is education and observation, not legal or financial advice.