College sports are booming, and college athletes are earning like professionals. Five years after the NCAA opened the door to name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation, players can now make money from their schools, donors, collectives, brands and their own social media audiences. Yet the NIL revolution has failed to fix the problem it was designed to solve: the lack of fair payment for student-athletes.

The stakes of the NIL era trace back to O'Bannon v. NCAA, the landmark case that challenged the premise that student-athletes could generate commercial value for their schools while receiving nothing in return. The lawsuit established that the NCAA's rules were subject to antitrust scrutiny, and the Ninth Circuit found the restrictions on athlete compensation too restrictive, paving the way for a system that allows student-athletes to monetize themselves. The Supreme Court reinforced that antitrust trajectory in June 2021, unanimously ruling against the NCAA in NCAA v. Alston over its restrictions on education-related benefits. When the NIL rules changed in 2021 that same month, the initial promise was straightforward: student-athletes would finally be allowed to make money from their own identities.

But according to Blake Lawrence, a former college football linebacker and co-founder of NIL technology company Opendorse, the marketplace that followed is a complicated one—and a far cry from a fair market.

"Information is necessary to create a fair market," Lawrence told Fortune, noting that 67% of the school compensation tracked by his company goes to athletes without agents. Because there is no professional intermediary, student-athletes have been pushed to maximize their earnings on their own, which in turn led donors to begin pooling money through booster-organized collectives, brands to begin signing athletes and fans to begin buying jerseys. Opendorse's data suggests the market is expanding faster than forecast.

According to Lawrence, NIL today is just a glimpse of what happens when athletes realize that knowing the market can be as valuable as being good enough to participate in it.

Some players have already taken compensation into their own hands. College football kickers have begun communicating with one another through informal group chats and social media to negotiate contracts, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The report noted that kickers shared information about what comparable players were making, giving them a better sense of what they can ask for.

Starting kickers at Power Four schools (the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC—college football's four highest-profile conferences) are averaging roughly $225,000 this season—a 60.9% increase from a year earlier—while some are receiving as much as $600,000, according to the Journal.

Still, even with college sports growing rapidly, the market has not produced the financial transparency needed to keep pay honest. Lawrence said an athlete's total economic package can consist of payments, collective money, brand deals and other commercial arrangements. The school payments grew out of the House v. NCAA settlement approved in June 2025, which allows schools to share revenue directly with athletes under a cap and established a clearinghouse to vet certain third-party NIL deals, yet there is no NFL-style centralized database that contains every college contract. In professional sports, he noted, historical contracts are readily available to teams and agencies, giving both sides information when they negotiate. College sports lacks that system, and the gap falls hardest on athletes negotiating on their own. Whether college sports ever builds the league-wide contract records that professional sports treats as standard remains one of the open questions of the NIL era. Even so, there are ways for athletes to maximize their NIL compensation.

Social media makes you an "anomaly"

The biggest NIL deals are relatively easy to identify. A quarterback who ranks among the best players in the country and has millions of followers will obviously command large commercial value. A player who is exceptional on the field but lacks notoriety is a different story.

Lawrence describes a college athlete's earning potential as a combination of two factors: athletic ability and social media reach.

"If you are good at your sport and have good socials, you're in high earning potential," he said. That combination produces what he calls an "anomaly" athlete—someone whose athletic ability and marketability make them considerably more valuable than either characteristic would suggest on its own.

The Opendorse president pointed to former LSU gymnast and social media influencer Livvy Dunne, and former Heisman Trophy winner and current NFL player Travis Hunter, as examples of "anomalies." Hunter, he said, represents an extreme version of the model because his audience can retain value even if he never plays football again.

"Travis Hunter could stop playing football tomorrow," Lawrence explained, "and never have to get a real job because he built an audience that follows him for the rest of his life."

Agents can lift the curtain

Representation is becoming one of the biggest factors in securing a "good" NIL deal, Lawrence said, because an agent working with multiple athletes can accumulate information across schools and negotiations. That breadth gives an agent a sweeping view of the market, which can then be used to negotiate the highest possible deal for their clients.

"A good agent is an individual with information that can help the athlete make a more informed decision," he said. The common denominator comes down to leverage.

"Let's say a general manager offers an athlete $50,000 a year to play for their team," Lawrence noted. "That might be more money than that kid has ever heard of in his life. Their parents may even think that is a life-changing outcome. What they don't know is the player that plays right next to them that has an agent that negotiated a $500,000 a year deal for the same position. Now that's information asymmetry."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.