Hayden Braun, Contributing Writer
The college sports world has completely changed since name, image and likeness, or NIL, was introduced. VCU and James Madison University are two of the many colleges and universities affected.
Guest speakers Ed McLaughlin, VCU’s athletics director, and Matt Roan, JMU’s athletics director, explored how Virginia colleges are adapting to the realities of NIL rights and revenue sharing in college athletics at a panel hosted by The Richmonder.
McLaughlin reflected on how much the industry has changed, admitting he never imagined his day-to-day life would include conversations with agents.
The previous era of college athletics has passed, but McLaughlin noted there are limitations on NIL money — and not every athletic group gets a fair share.
“There is a cap of what you can directly share with student-athletes in your athletic department,” McLaughlin said.
At JMU, Roan emphasized the pace of change and the need for agility. Networks of Virginia’s athletic directors have begun collaborating regularly to navigate what he called “constant evolution.”
Revenue sharing is not a new term as it is the evolution of the commercial activity with student-athletes.
“Then it was NIL and then now we have revenue share, which is just a fancy way to say in-house NIL,” Roan said.
One of the key questions focused on how these institutions fund the revenue sharing and NIL payments. The levers are largely internal: ticket sales, donor contributions and corporate partnerships, according to Roan.
“In our state, everything we’re doing right now in that rev share space, it can’t be a ‘we don’t get EOG dollars but it’s not fee dollars,’” Roan said. “It’s the dollars that we create that we’re then reinvesting back in our student-athletes.”
VCU has explored non-traditional revenue streams such as renting out the Siegel Center for concerts and events to support its athlete compensation model, McLaughlin said.
Both athletic departments addressed the cultural shifts required beyond funding. McLaughlin pointed out the internal challenges of managing a different athlete experience.
“We have a subset of 25 to 30 student-athletes who are being compensated in revenue-sharing, and we have 300 student-athletes who are not,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin raised the question of fairness and the need to ensure all athletes still feel valued and supported, even as some receive significantly larger compensation. Roan agreed regulation is long overdue in areas such as agents and transfers.
When asked what the advantage is for mid-major institutions like VCU and JMU in this shifting climate, the two athletic departments emphasised strategic advantage over pure spending power.
JMU views itself as “best in class” among its peer group by controlling what it can and preparing for what comes next, Roan said.
VCU sees the moment as an opportunity to galvanise where it sits in the college basketball pecking order, McLaughlin said.
The panel cast light on how possibly under-publicized athletic programs are heading toward revenue-sharing and NIL as a metric of establishing institutional relevance and athlete value, in a landscape where the guidelines are still being finalized.
For administrations in Virginia and beyond, the question is not only what they pay athletes, but how they build sustainable models around compensation, regulatory change and institutional mission.