Five clauses do the work. Each is quoted verbatim below, with what it means and the job it leaves for whoever advises the athlete.
Exhibit 1 · §1
The money is framed as passive, not as work
“all Consideration paid to Student-Athlete pursuant to the Agreement is solely for the passive uses of Student-Athlete’s NIL and is not compensation for Student-Athlete’s performance of any services or labor.”
What it means. An F-1 visa permits study, not employment. So the agreement is drafted to characterize the payment as a license fee for passive use rather than payment for work — the distinction the athlete’s status depends on.
What it leaves to do. That characterization has to survive contact with reality. The moment a deal asks the athlete to show up, shoot content, or make an appearance, the passive framing weakens and the analysis changes. Someone has to run that test per deal, in writing, before it is signed.
Exhibit 1 · §1 (cont.)
Promotional appearances are made explicitly voluntary
“Student-Athlete may from time to time during the Term be offered the opportunity but is not obligated under the Agreement to participate in various team-related promotional activities (e.g, media days, press conferences, interviews, video shoots, social media posts, merchandise signing).”
What it means. If the athlete were obliged to appear, the payment starts to look like compensation for services — the thing the previous clause is trying to avoid. Making participation optional protects the passive-use position.
What it leaves to do. It also means the protection is only as good as what happens in practice. An athlete who feels obliged to attend everything has a paper position that does not match the record.
Exhibit 1 · §2
Visa compliance is pushed onto the athlete
“Student-Athlete is solely responsible for ensuring that any activities undertaken by Student-Athlete do not constitute conduct which may violate the terms of Student-Athlete’s non-immigrant visa status … and accepts responsibility for any resulting immigration consequences.”
What it means. The institution allocates the immigration risk to the eighteen-to-twenty-two-year-old. Whoever advises that athlete inherits the question the contract just handed over.
What it leaves to do. This is the clause that creates the advisory market. The athlete is now solely responsible for a judgment they are not equipped to make, and the school has said so in writing.
Exhibit 1 · §2 (cont.)
The school tells the athlete to hire their own lawyer
“Institution recommends that Student-Athlete consult with their own immigration legal counsel and Student-Athlete has had the opportunity to consult with legal counsel regarding impacts on Student-Athlete’s immigration status.”
What it means. A Big Ten institution puts in its own contract that this needs outside immigration counsel. That is not a platform’s marketing claim about complexity; it is the counterparty conceding the point.
What it leaves to do. Counsel is expensive and slow per deal. What a firm can do between the deal arriving and counsel being retained is triage it — sort the clearly permissible from the clearly not, and hand the genuinely uncertain ones to an attorney with the facts already assembled.
Exhibit 1 · §3
Withholding is real, and it is capped
“projected taxes on the Consideration shall be withheld based upon the appropriate income classification … but in no event shall the amount of such withholding exceed the maximum possible tax liability to Student-Athlete under applicable law.”
What it means. Money is withheld before the athlete sees it, at a rate driven by income classification — and for a nonresident, by treaty position. Get the classification wrong and the athlete is over-withheld or under-withheld all season.
What it leaves to do. “Appropriate income classification” for a nonresident is a real determination: residency status, treaty eligibility, whether the income is FDAP or effectively connected. It is arithmetic, and it is the arithmetic nobody runs until a return is due.
The pattern across all five
The institution protects its own position and assigns the rest to the athlete: you are responsible for your visa, you should get your own lawyer, and we will withhold what we think is right. None of that is unreasonable — a university is not equipped to run an immigration and cross-border tax analysis for every athlete on its roster. But it does mean the questions land on the athlete, and therefore on whoever advises them.
That is the work SidelineWealth is built for: determining residency and treaty position before the withholding rate is set, triaging whether a specific deal is permissible under the athlete’s work authorization, and producing a documented record of the reasoning — so that when counsel is brought in, the facts are already assembled, and when a position is later questioned, the file answers for itself.
Source and affiliation. Quotations are verbatim from the University of Michigan NIL License Agreement form (marked 6-20-25 in its own footer), from the public copy hosted by Bloomberg. The form is a blank template: party names and dates are placeholders, and no athlete, deal, or figure appears in it. Excerpts are reproduced here for commentary. SidelineWealth is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the University of Michigan, the Big Ten Conference, or the NCAA, and this page is a reading of one public document rather than a statement about any institution’s practices. Other schools’ agreements differ.