As college athletes cash in, schools keep records of name, image, likeness deals under wraps

By Cullen Browder, WRAL anchor/reporter

From men's football and basketball to women's volleyball and softball, local college student-athletes were quick to cash in on the ability to make money off of their name, image and likeness (NIL). We even found many of them on the Cameo website where fans can pay student-athletes for private messages.

While Cameo deals clearly list their prices, with most local athletes making $15 to $60 per message, the really high profile athletes are making more.

"There have a been a lot of guys getting big deals, making a lot of money," said Pet Sumner with the Sumner Group, a North Carolina-based marketing, branding and advertising agency. He's referring to media reports that some of the bigger names in college football and basketball have NIL deals worth more than $1 million.

In some cases, the athletic program's national profile and the player's position can drive up the price. But Sumner says for most athletes, they truly need to play to get paid.

"You’ve gotta be active on social media to get more followers, but also the thing is they gotta perform," Sumner told WRAL Investigates.

We wanted to examine the potential earnings for athletes, so we picked Carolina quarterback Sam Howell as an example.

Howell has 69,000 instagram followers, 22,000 on Twitter and another 12,000 on Tik Tok. Social media influencers make about $0.80 cents per follower. That puts his potential earnings last year at $112,000 per deal.

He currently has a deal with Bojangles, but financial details haven't been released.

While college athlete endorsements like Howell's are now allowed, finding out how much athletes are making is no easier than before when athletes cashed in under the table.

"College athletics has been in need of greater transparency and greater public scrutiny," said Frank LoMonte, who heads up the University of Florida's Brechner Center for Freedom of Information. He questions why NIL deals aren't made public by schools. "If they’re not doing anything wrong, if they’re not using these agreements in an untoward way that they are forbidden from doing, then they ought to invite the public in," he said.

WRAL Investigates found the Triangle's big three schools all have different internal rules for tracking NIL deals. Some require athletes to report deals to the athletic department. Others require themn to report deals to their teams, while in some cases, NIL deals don't need to be reported at all. That's a problem, according to LoMonte. "Everybody’s gotta be on a level playing field," he said.

Schools aren't sharing information about the deals with the public. WRAL Investigates submitted public records requests to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University for NIL deals. Those requests were rejected because schools claim the records are protected by the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

UNC wrote: "Your request is for records directly related to a student, which are protected by the family educational rights and privacy act-- or FERPA- and not subject to disclosure."

NC State told WRAL Investigates that the school: "...believes this information constitutes an education record under FERPA, since this information is maintained by the university to monitor compliance with North Carolina laws, NCAA regulations and athletic department policies."

"Something that was created by Nike or Coca Cola was never an education record," argues LoMonte. He feels FERPA is being misused. "Nothing about these agreements fits what Congress had in mind when they made education records confidential," he said.

Social media shows us Duke Basketball's Wendell Moore is sponsored by Boa Blast nutritional products, as well as Bojangles.

His teammate, freshman Paolo Banchero publicized deals with trading card company Panini and a video game maker. We also found out he had a deal with Roxboro custom car shop Dreamworks Motorsports after another teammate was pulled over for DWI while driving a vehicle loaned to Banchero. In years past, that could have led to Banchero's suspension for violating NCAA rules.

But this is a new day, and athletes now have several ways to make money – by the rules – which Sumner says is about time. "It’s a cool tool," he said of NIL. "We gotta be safe with it, because it could be kind of dangerous, but in the end, I like it. I think the players deserve it because it’s their name, image and likeness."

LoMonte agrees, but thinks there's benefit in letting fans examine those deals. "There’s a real interest in the public in knowing whether name, image and likeness frankly is being used in ways that might effect the honest and integrity of the sport," he said.

The courts will eventually have the final say on whether the records can be made public. Both the University of Georgia and Louisiana State University are being sued by local media outlets after their public records requests were denied for the same reasons Carolina and NCSU denied WRAL Investigates.