WASHINGTON (TNND) — It’s another football weekend and athletes across the country are making money like never before. But, with the recent election, what does the future look like for these athletes and their parents with Name, Image and Likeness contracts?

The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that U.S.-born athletes can make money through things like advertisements, autographs and college boosters. Before that, athletes could only compete in exchange for a diploma.

The NIL Opendorse platform estimates that the NIL market is expected to reach $1.67 billion in the 2024-2025 school year. The platform reports that the highest earnings generally go to the best male basketball and football players.

The move was a game-changer for athletes preparing to turn professional, who can now build their own brands while still in college and secure future endorsement deals.

Recent examples include athletes like Colorado’s Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, Texas’ Arch Manning and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe. According to On the 3rd, Sanders’ NIL valuation is $6.3 million, Hunter’s is $3.4 million, Manning’s is $3.1 million, and Milroe’s is $2.2 million .

Robert Boland is a sports law attorney with the Shumaker Law Firm in Ohio and a professor at Seton Hall University. The National News Desk spoke to him about the NIL agreements and how a new Trump administration could play a role in making the process work.

While the NCAA has collected money from selling tickets to games over the years, Boland said it’s only fair that players get a percentage.

“College athletics is an $18 billion business only surpassed by the NFL. And so yes, the athletes who helped make this possible and have been denied probably a percentage of that for too long.”

Boland said one of the challenges the industry faces is the system for sharing this revenue and currently it is NIL, which remains largely unregulated at the moment.

There are many examples where athletes got not what they were promised, less than what they were promised, or nothing that they were promised,” Boland said. “And there are certainly people waiting to get some of that money out of them when they get it.”

On the other hand, Boland said there are many good things about NIL that allow athletes to “benefit tremendously.”

“It’s a very mixed bag and one that probably needs a little bit of cleaning up and repairing, considering how young some of these athletes actually are,” Boland said.

Boland noted that financial management of athletes could be a potential concern.

I think it’s beneficial to give athletes some participation and percentage, maybe at a lower level, before they earn a lot as professionals. In some cases, that might be all they’re going to get.”

Despite this, Boland said that because of his concerns about youth and immaturity, athletes need protection in this regard.

Moving on to politics, President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over the White House and Congress has some families wondering what will happen to NIL with full control of Congress.

“We’re probably heading toward a time where the movement that has accompanied the denial of athletes being employees and athletes being union members is probably going to slow down or even stop,” Boland said. “So NIL can exist as the predominant system by which athletes are paid, meaning you are not an employee, you are an endorser and an independent contractor.”

Boland said we were also waiting for a settlement in the case of Home vs. NCAA.

In October, a California judge gave preliminary approval to a proposed settlement in House v. NCAA, which includes a historic $2.8 billion settlement of three antitrust cases facing the NCAA and the conferences, Athletics reported. This would allow schools to begin paying players directly through revenue sharing as early as 2025.

Boland believes this proposal will receive the green light from the Republican Congress and the Trump administration.

“But NIL will still be available to others. Otherwise, it will just be somewhat restricted,” Boland said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.