SEC presidents voted Monday to standardize name, image and likeness (NIL) and revenue-sharing agreements across the conference, effective immediately. Following the Big Ten, the SEC is the second power conference to adopt a uniform athlete contract model. Its new agreement includes sections that schools can customize. Under NIL agreements, athletes authorize schools to use their names and images, with those rights typically sublicensed to conferences, the NCAA, television partners and sponsors. Schools may distribute up to $21.6 million directly to athletes this academic year under the House v. NCAA settlement.
The Big Ten developed its template before the settlement took effect in July 2025. Despite that common framework, public records revealed differences among schools' agreements. Washington, for example, included a provision making a player or his new school liable for the remaining contract value if he entered the transfer portal. Big Ten agreements also contain a provision requiring players to acknowledge that they are not employees and waive claims to that status.
The SEC's move advances conference self-governance, although legal protections remain a central concern. Unlike union-negotiated professional sports agreements, contracts drafted collectively by competing schools currently lack comparable protection against antitrust challenges. The proposed Protect College Sports Act promises limited protections covering payment caps, NIL regulations, eligibility and transfers. Meanwhile, SEC presidents postponed a vote on reinstating the conference's internal transfer restrictions. Before their removal in June 2021, those rules required athletes transferring between SEC programs to sit out one season.
