Branding the Collegiate Athlete: Navigating Communication Ethics, NIL, and the Student-Athlete Dynamic
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
In July of 2021 the name, image, likeness (NIL) policy was introduced by the NCAA allowing college athletes to make profits through endorsements, brand deals and other business ventures. Today collegiate athletes are making between $1,000 - $4.2 million in brand deals with projections for brands deals to only increase. Kitchen and Tourky (2022) state “we are surrounded, indeed almost inundated, by brands almost since we first become aware of ourselves as sentient beings” (p. 10). This work will discuss the implications and complexities of navigating the branding of collegiate athletes including disruption of team dynamics and the competing narratives between the universities, individual players, teams, and brand sponsorships. In addition, this work explores the complexities of the competing brand narratives through a communication ethics lens understanding that our current historical moment is characterized by disagreement about which virtues and narratives should guide us (Arnett, et al, 2018).
