Name, image, and likeness has been one of the best things to happen to college sports. Since the NCAA’s interim policy took effect on July 1, 2021, athletes who spent decades generating enormous value without seeing any of it can finally get paid for their own names, and the seven-figure deals making headlines are a genuinely good outcome. That’s worth celebrating. It’s also worth remembering how many more athletes are eligible for the same thing.
Emory University is a useful place to widen the lens.
The Eagles are a Division III program in Atlanta with 19 varsity sports, more than 400 student-athletes, and 35 NCAA team national championships. It’s a track record most Division I athletic departments would envy. Emory has competed in the University Athletic Association since 1986, a conference of academic peers that’s widely considered Division III’s strongest. The Eagles were ranked the top Division III athletics program in the country in 2024-25 and finished fourth in 2025-26, capping a run of 23 top-10 national finishes in 24 years. No athletic scholarships. No conference media rights deal. Just sustained, program-wide excellence.
That combination of elite performance, real audiences, and almost no traditional NIL infrastructure is exactly the gap fan-powered NIL was built to close.
Division III athletes can do NIL deals. Most just don’t know it.
This is the single most common misconception we hear from athletes outside Division I: some version of “NIL isn’t really for us.”
It is. NCAA name, image, and likeness rules apply across all three divisions. A Division III golfer can sign a local brand partnership, monetize a following, run a paid camp, or take a fan-funded deal under the same basic framework as a Division I quarterback. NIL deals run the full range too, from a $50 post for a local restaurant to a national campaign, and the small ones count.
What Division III athletes typically lack isn’t eligibility. It’s access. Nobody comes looking. Nobody has built the on-ramp.
Emory is one of the few programs that has said this out loud. Its student-athlete development program, the Eagle Edge, lists supporting athletes in exploring NIL possibilities as part of its formal commitment to personal and career development, alongside academic support, leadership, and service. That’s a deliberate institutional choice, and it’s still rarer than it should be at this level.
What Emory athletes are already doing with their platforms
Ben Pearce is the clearest example. The men’s basketball standout became Emory’s all-time leading scorer, carried the Eagles to their first NCAA Division III championship game, and was named a national player of the year. Off the court, he founded the Emory Sports Business Association and co-founded the Atlanta Sports Business Symposium, which drew more than 250 attendees to its first event. He also used his NIL rights to run a basketball skills camp back in his hometown.
That last part deserves attention, because it’s the most replicable NIL play in college sports and the least glamorous. No brand deal required. No agent. An athlete with local credibility, a skill people will pay to learn, and a hometown that already cares.
Look across the rest of the roster and you find the same raw material:
- Zimo Li, a national player of the year in women’s golf, on a team that has won back-to-back national championships.
- Carys Code, the 2025 NCAA Division III individual national champion in women’s golf, competing while enrolled at one of the country’s top business schools.
- Nikki Boon, a neuroscience PhD student, national champion in the indoor pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon, and a gold medalist for the Netherlands at the Women’s Decathlon World Championships, where the winner carries the official title “World’s Greatest Athlete.”
- Leah Wang, a women’s soccer player who founded Emory’s Asian and Pacific Islander Student-Athlete group and testified before Congress in support of Title IX, earning recognition as a Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award regional honoree.
Every one of those athletes has a story, an audience, and a reason for someone to invest in them. What none of them has, by default, is a market that shows up looking.
Why fan-powered NIL works at this level
At the biggest programs, NIL money tends to concentrate: a smaller number of large backers organized around a revenue sport, and it works well there. Division III runs on something different, and at this level that difference is an advantage.
What Division III has is dense, motivated, geographically scattered fan bases made of alumni, parents, classmates, and hometown supporters. Emory alone has more than 130,000 living alumni, the majority of them from outside Georgia. An Emory swimmer with 80-plus teammates, a decade of club-team relationships, and an alumni network spread across the country has a few hundred people who would genuinely put $25 behind them.
That’s the mechanism: smaller amounts, more of them, tied directly to an individual athlete. It’s also more transparent, because the fan knows exactly who they’re supporting and what they’re supporting them for.
For athletes in non-revenue sports, women’s sports, and Division II and Division III programs, this is the difference between an NIL market that theoretically includes them and one that actually reaches them.
Doing it right
Staying clean is straightforward. Check your school’s disclosure process, and work through a platform that handles compliance review and tax paperwork for you rather than leaving it on your plate. That’s what protects both the deal and your eligibility.
The takeaway
Emory has spent 40 years proving that competing at a national level and getting a serious education aren’t trade-offs. The NIL era adds a third thing to that list, which is building something for yourself while you’re still on the roster. The athletes who make the most of it are the ones whose people know how to show up.
That’s the whole idea behind fan-powered NIL: every athlete gets a profile, every fan gets a way in, and the deal happens without waiting for anyone else to notice you first.
Emory has a page on RallyFuel at rallyfuel.com/schools/emory, where fans can browse Eagles athletes and put Fuel behind the ones they want to back. That Fuel converts to a real NIL deal when the conditions are met, with 90% going to the athlete, and refunds in full when they aren’t. For athletes, a profile is free and takes a few minutes, and the alumni, parents, and hometown supporters who already follow you are the market.
