By Connor Glass, of CCH&A
The landmark House v. NCAA settlement was approved over eight months ago. Since then, the SCORE Act stalled due to skepticism on both sides of the aisle, courts across the country have been flooded with eligibility lawsuits, sponsor logos are being slapped on college jerseys, and the Indiana Hoosiers are national champions… in football. It’s business as usual in a multi-billion-dollar industry that continues to rapidly evolve while everyone does their best to keep up.
While fiddles play and Rome burns, an opportunistic group has emerged as unexpected beneficiaries of the chaos: the NIL “agent.” Unlike professional sports, where athlete representation is tightly regulated, the world of NIL agents remains much less structured. This combination of opportunity leading to exploitation has attracted federal scrutiny and growing concern from coaches, lawmakers, and compliance officials.
High school athletes all over the country are being contacted by people purporting to be NIL agents, or often self-described “consultants,” who lack any sort of legal or marketing expertise or experience. While many NIL agents are qualified and act in the best interests of their clients, the unregulated landscape has attracted many bad actors who prioritize self-interest overall.
Several bills have been drafted with some sort of athlete agent certification requirement, but the NIL agent problem is here now, and waiting on Congress to solve this problem may prove to be unwise. Furthermore, since Congress has struggled to pass new college athletics-related legislation, maybe enforcement of current law is a better solution.
Congress passed a law in 2004 that may be key in bringing some structure to the NIL agent landscape. The Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA) includes detailed requirements that prohibit athlete agents from:
1) directly or indirectly recruiting or soliciting a student athlete to enter into an agency contract by
(a) giving any false or misleading information or making a false promise or representation, or
(b) providing anything of value (including a loan) to a student athlete or anyone associated with the athlete before the athlete enters into an agency contract;
(2) pre- or post-dating an agency contract; or
(3) entering into an agency contract with a student athlete without providing the athlete with certain disclosures.[21]
SPARTA also requires the athlete agent and the athlete to inform the athletic director of the educational institution at which the student athlete is enrolled that the student athlete has entered into an agency contract.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is tasked with enforcing SPARTA, but the law has mostly laid dormant… until recently. In January of this year, the FTC sent 20 letters to NCAA Division I institutions requesting information on how athlete agent contracts are disclosed and whether schools have encountered compliance issues – warning that agents who fail to provide required disclosures or make misleading promises could face civil penalties.[22]
“Agents that work with student athletes have responsibilities and legal requirements including notifying colleges and universities when their student athletes have signed agent contracts,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.[23] “This inquiry is aimed at better understanding whether sports agents are complying with the law and the degree to which student athletes are being protected.”
What will come of these letters, and any potential actions by the FTC, remains to be seen. NIL has created unprecedented financial opportunities for collegiate athletes, and professional representation may be critical in helping young athletes navigate such opportunities. Just like any evolving space with big financial implications, there will always be bad actors trying to take advantage of somebody else. What remains to be seen is whether or not the FTC can use SPARTA to weed out some of these bad actors.
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§ 20:22. Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, 2 Fed. Trade Comm’n. § 20:22 (2026) ↑
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Federal Trade Commission, FTC is Seeking Information from 20 Universities on Sports Agents’ Compliance with Law Aimed at Protecting Student Athletes, January 12, 2026, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/01/ftc-seeking-information-20-universities-sports-agents-compliance-law-aimed-protecting-student. ↑
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