OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — College football's transfer portal has dominated sports headlines this offseason, with big names like Dylan Raiola leaving Nebraska for Oregon raising questions about how transfers work with Name, Image and Likeness agreements.
KMTV sent a public records request to the University of Nebraska on Jan. 14 and received templates of the NIL license agreements they use. The documents describe how student-athletes can end their contracts with the university.
"So this area now is fairly new and since athletes still are not being considered employees, it's just standard contract law that's going to govern these NIL deals," David Weber said.
Weber is faculty director of the Sports Law Program at the University of Oregon and was previously a law professor at Creighton.
The Nebraska templates outline three options for ending NIL contracts:
The school and student-athlete can mutually agree to end the contract. The new school can buy out the contract from the old school. Or if the student-athlete enters the transfer portal before the pay period ends, the school could require them to repay what they would have made in the rest of that period.
"And these are the things that we would see at the upper echelons of corporate America, right? More so than a typical employment relationship," Weber said.
Student athletes are not employees - the NIL agreement says that explicitly.
"But because it's not an employment relationship, the parties do have a fair amount of latitude as to what they're going to put in the contract and what terms are there," Weber said.
As long as the separations are in writing, the student-athletes can earn NIL from their new school.
"I always tell athletes if it's not in writing, it's not real, right? Everything should be in writing," Weber said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
