It’s the big question in the mind of countless aspiring student-athletes: How much money can I realistically make playing college sports?

There is no easy answer – but the opportunities are growing to earn financial rewards for your years of hard work and sacrifice.

The world of college-sports pay to play is going through another wave of massive change. The House v. NCAAlawsuit settlement requires schools to pay students directly. On top of that, athletes will still be able to land Name, Image and Likeness endorsement deals.

What the House settlement’s fallout will mean for athlete pay and NIL side deals is unclear. But this much isclear: Getting the most out of the student-athlete experience will depend not just on the strength of your skills and brand, but also on the strength of your representation.

New legal developments and rules are shaking up the playing field almost daily. So it’s smart – maybe essential – to have a lawyer on your side. Fast-paced change and complex endorsement contracts can create opportunities – or booby traps. In the same way a good coach helps you reach your potential and avoid injury, a trained, trustworthy and transparent representative can open doors and protect you from being exploited.

That’s the role of Invicta Athletics. With attorneys at the heart of our team, we stay on top of fast-changing rules, opportunities and pitfalls. We’re ready to help you maximize your experience and earnings as a student-athlete, while keeping you safe from enforcement penalties and fine-print contract hazards.

As of early summer 2025, here’s how things look for student-athletes.

The first five years of NIL saw players like Shedeur Sanders and Quinn Ewers rake in millions of dollars. Big stars like Kaitlin Clark and Cooper Flagg became the international faces of big brands such as Gatorade, Nike and Fanatics.

But the headlines about superstars with massive deals overshadowed a far-less-glamorous reality for typical college players. More than half of student-athletes make less than $500 per year from NIL, according to the NCAA. When the big names are included, the average student athlete’s annual NIL take last year was about $21,000. That’s about as much as a lot of campus peers earn at decent part-time and summer jobs. And in contrast to JuJu Watkins’ slick State Farm and Nike commercials, the average NIL deal looks more like this: Tout a local restaurant or car dealership in a self-shot TikTok and get $100. Line up enough of these and you might not get rich, but at least you’re getting rewarded.

Now that NCAA Division I schools will start paying athletes directly through revenue sharing, everything is changing, including NIL.

D1 schools will have a $21.5 million salary cap for all sports, combined. Whether or not they spend it all, and how they divide it among the 500-800 athletes on campus, will be dictated partly by individual schools and partly by agreements with peer universities – deals that are still shaping up.

What does that mean for players? That will be negotiable. Student-athletes can strengthen their position by hiring representatives to negotiate on their behalf with universities.

For most of the 500 to 800 athletes on a typical Division I campus, revenue sharing will mean the university will give cash stipends on top of their full or partial scholarships and other existing benefits. About 70% of the salary pool is expected go to the sports that generate the most revenue – men’s football and basketball – and the athletes who play them. Assuming a maxed-out $21.5 million salary cap, that would mean about $15 million to divide among about 100-125 football and basketball players, for an average of about $120,000 to $150,000 each. Of course, that range is an average: Most could expect far less, while the biggest stars will likely earn $1 million or more.

Lower-revenue men’s and women’s athletics are likely to divide the remaining 30% of the revenue-sharing money pool for player salaries. Assuming a fully funded pool and roughly 500 athletes in lower-revenue sports, athlete pay might be around $10,000 to $15,000.

Realistically, though, it’s possible or probable that only the 70 revenue-rich schools in the Power 4 conferences – and maybe only some of them – will max out their revenue-sharing pools. The average student-athlete stipend at many of the other 60-plus D1 schools will probably be significantly lower.

Money for endorsements and NIL will be on top of anything from the university. NIL isn’t going away, but the system is likely to look different, and athletes and schools will each have many new rules to follow. D1 powerhouse universities are collectively creating a new College Sports Commission (CSC) to reshape and enforce salary-cap rules and pay for play. One big goal is to do away with bogus endorsement deals that lure athletes with large sums of money and require little or no brand promotion in return.

Still, it appears athletes and their representatives will remain free to negotiate endorsement deals directly with brands, as opposed to the collectives, as long as the deals fall within whatever rules the CSC adopts.

Finally, NIL opportunities remain for athletes eyeing NCAA Division II and II schools and NAIA schools. (In fact, NAIA was first to allow NIL.) Those institutions still won’t pay athletes directly, and few have official booster collectives. But lower-division athletes can still benefit from NIL opportunities through personal branding, local sponsorships, and school-supported initiatives. Invicta Athletics will help you identify opportunities and stay within the rules.

Being a student-athlete is a path for the strong, and it isn’t easy. In return for the grind, you deserve fair financial rewards. Invicta Athletics works as hard as you do to ensure our clients benefit from their sacrifice and avoid the risks of NIL deception, clawbacks, compliance violations and income-tax issues that lay in the weeds.

That’s why it makes sense to recruit Invicta Athletics to your team. Focus on your game and leave the rest to us.