The NCAA’s new name, image and likeness transparency platform, NIL Assist, went live on Thursday morning, providing deidentified NIL compensation information, as well as a service provider registry and educational programming.

The app and website, created in conjunction with Teamworks, creates for the first time a public database-like platform where athletes and the public can find the average and median earnings for NIL deals, sortable by subdivision, sport, position and type of NIL transaction. It aims to show, for example, what a Power 4 quarterback makes on average for a social media post — on Thursday morning, the website’s data dashboard reported that the average disclosure under those parameters was $6,605 but that the median was $150.

Here’s an example from the NIL dashboard, which says the average social media NIL deal for a P4 QB is $6,605, but the median is $150.

(The NCAA emphasized the data will get more accurate as time goes on and more info comes in). https://t.co/NmGUrSmzXD pic.twitter.com/LvIM3KikpT

— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) August 1, 2024

In January, the Division I Council adopted new rules requiring athletes to disclose to their schools any NIL agreement exceeding $600, including terms of the deal, services rendered and payment. The schools then must share the information, stripped of names, to the NCAA at least twice per year. More than 20 states already require similar disclosures.

“We’ve heard from coaches, student-athletes, their families, they want some information about what the market is yielding, and we think if we do it publicly, that’s the best way to do it,” NCAA vice president of academic and membership affairs David Schnase said. “There are going to be some who want way more information than this is going to provide, but at least this is a starting point for folks who are trying to figure that out.”

Although athletes are required to disclose their NIL deals, there isn’t a clear penalty yet for not doing so. NCAA officials emphasized that this database won’t be used as an eligibility trap and is just for information. The Division I Council in April added an incentive, allowing schools to provide more NIL assistance to athletes who disclose their NIL deals.

“That student-athlete can choose not to disclose, but they then can’t take advantage of institutional assistance as it relates to NIL, so we think there’s a bit of a carrot,” Schnase said.

Officials cautioned that the data isn’t complete at launch but will improve with time as more information is put into the system. They also acknowledged concerns of conflict of interest with Teamworks, which itself has an NIL management service.

“We’re treating this partnership as an individual endeavor,” Teamworks senior vice president of business development Kevin Barefoot said. “We’re not taking any data from this project and using it in other commercial forms. This is a project partnering with the NCAA that narrowly focused on delivering to schools and student-athletes what they requested and voted on with NCAA bylaws.”

In addition to NIL data, the NIL Assist platform has a voluntary service provider registry for agents, brands, collectives and products. Officials hope providers will sign up, allowing athletes to find more connections or to review previous work, which could help other athletes in the future find an agent.

When The Athletic surveyed agents and collectives earlier this summer and asked about the registry, several said they wouldn’t sign up and questioned its value or impact.

“It’s been mixed, which is what we expected,” Barefoot said of the registry sign-ups. “Some people have said they feel good about the access and visibility among student-athletes. … Perfect is the enemy of good here. If we can get to a point where there’s more information out for student-athletes to understand the market and the service providers, that’s a great outcome.”

GO DEEPER

What’s the future of NIL collectives after the House v. NCAA settlement?

The disclosure of NIL data could play a role in the recent House settlement proposal, which spells out the idea of a clearinghouse to vet contracts and includes the potential creation of an enforcement arm to determine the fair market value of NIL deals and whether they’re true NIL arrangements. Collectives have already questioned the legality of that practice, and it’s not clear how that would play out if the settlement is approved.

“There are a lot of things happening outside of what we can control with this platform,” Schnase said. “So while this platform will not influence those outcomes, when the board starts making decisions, we’ll have pretty good data to help them make informed decisions. That’s the most important part of this looking forward. … I wouldn’t specify the (House settlement), but there’s active litigation that’s influencing a lot of our decisions right now.”

(Photo: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)

It’s certainly a striking look.

Looking like something between an expert diamond dealer and a crack sniper for some renegade sci-fi army, the internet’s new favourite Olympian, South Korean pistol shooter Kim Yeji, is one of the Paris Games’ most notable stars so far.

This is the great thing about the Olympics. Before the games you’re looking forward to all the stuff you knew about before: maybe Sha’Carri Richardson in the athletics, Andy Murray’s farewell in the tennis or Simone Biles in the gymnastics.

But then there’s the stuff that you didn’t know you cared about, until you see it. And an incredibly cool-looking pistol shooter most certainly falls into that category.

Kim crashed into the online consciousness after she competed in the first of her two events in Paris, the 10m air pistol on Sunday.

The X account ‘Women Posting Ws’, which seems to be the root source of her viral status, wrote alongside a picture of Kim shooting at the target, back slightly arched, her shoulder high with her chin resting on it and her non-shooting hand in her pocket, that it was “the most aura I have ever seen in an image”.

The social media consensus seemed to be that Kim looked like some sort of robo-assassin from an action film, a killer from the near future that doesn’t need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle, because she looks plenty cool enough on her own, thank you very much. GQ magazine wrote that she looked “straight out of a cyberpunk fan-fic”. Glamour magazine asked if Kim is “the biggest badass of the Paris Olympics?” Elon Musk got involved too, but let’s not allow him to ruin it.

The contraption she wore isn’t actually a pair of glasses as such, more a sort of miniature scaffolding attached to her forehead that aid her performance. Over her left eye is a small black rectangle, a blinder that blocks out one eye and allows greater focus in the other. Over her right eye was a small black circle, actually a relatively common bit of kit that features a mechanical iris to help avoid blurring and allows greater focus on the target.

Subsequently, another clip of Kim in action started to do the rounds, of her in the same ‘glasses’ and with the same incredibly steady hand and android-esque calm, but with her cap on backwards this time. The clip shows her shoot her final shot, put down her pistol, lift up the blinder over her left eye and give an off-stage look that presumably was to just check the score, but to the viewer looked like she was eyeballing some unspecified doubter with a sense of Arctic-cold pity.

That clip isn’t actually from the Olympics, rather the World Cup in Baku earlier this year. She set the world record in that competition, on her way to winning the 25m pistol title. That’s the one she’ll be aiming for in her other event, which takes place on Friday.

Kim is 31, originally from Maepo, which is about 100 miles south-east of Seoul, and now lives in nearby Danyang. She’s been competing since 2006, and won bronze at the 2010 World Junior Championships in the 10m air pistol. On her profile on the International Sports Shooting Federation website, under ‘hobbies’ she simply lists ‘sleeping’.

There was another thing that only enhanced the sense that she is actually a character from a Luc Besson film. Usually in those highly stylised stories, the assassin has some form of unusual affectation. Maybe it’s a fascination for a particular type of music, or an adherence to an ancient code of conduct, or they have a pet budgie that they’re weirdly devoted to or something.

Kim was competing with a stuffed toy elephant strapped to her belt. Which you could put down as an individual eccentricity, but in fact it was a sort of lucky charm that belongs to her five-year-old daughter, who is back home in Korea.

After the 10m medal ceremony, Kim told reporters that she couldn’t wait to tell her daughter all about her success. When asked what she was going to say about the medal, and her new-found viral status, Kim said: “I think I have become a bit famous now.”

The one problem with all this, if you can call it that, is that Kim didn’t actually win. On this occasion, at least. The gold medal went to her compatriot Oh Ye-jin, 12 years Kim’s junior, who edged her out by just a couple of points, setting an Olympic record of 243.2. Kim scored 241.3, meaning they both beat the previous record of 240.3, set by Russia’s Vitalina Batsarashkina in Tokyo. India’s Manu Bhaker was a way back in third.

Oh burst into tears after winning gold. “I still cannot believe I’m wearing a gold medal on my neck right now,” said Oh. “Maybe as time goes by, I will believe it. This medal is very heavy, by the way.”

Kim wasn’t alone in having a little calling card: while for her it was the elephant, Oh had a little purple heart on the end of her pistol — not, unfortunately, while she was actually competing, but just for the pictures afterwards.

(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

But just to add to the wholesome nature of the whole story, Kim could not have been more delighted for Oh, who is also her roommate in the athletes’ village in Paris.

“She’s like my little sister,” Kim told the Associated Press. “I always want to care for her and always be there for her. So when she won the gold medal, I was extra happy.

“I do not view her as my rival. This is a big stage, the Olympics, and we won the gold and silver. When we won these medals, we were so proud we are Koreans.”

The way with these things usually, when a sporting occasion or an athlete essentially becomes a meme, is that they come to people’s attention after the event, and are then gone, perhaps until the next comparable global event when people say, “Oh yeah, I remember her.”

However, this time the internet will have a second chance to witness Kim in all of her shooting glory when she competes in the 25-metre pistol event on Friday. And she seems pretty sure she’ll go one better, too.

“I am confident all the time… I, Kim Yeji, am going to win gold, no matter what.”

(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

NANTERRE, France — American swimming star Katie Ledecky cruised to victory in an event that’s become synonymous with her name, earning her first Olympic gold medal of the Paris Games in the women’s 1500-meter freestyle Wednesday.

Ledecky set an Olympic record with a time of 15:30.02.

She has not lost this race in more than 14 years, and she owns the 20 fastest times in world history in the event. It is, for all intents and purposes, only an actual race for silver. France’s Anastasiia Kirpichnikova earned it in 15:40.35, while Germany’s Isabel Gose won bronze in 15:41.16.

Simply the greatest. 🙌

Katie Ledecky adds another gold medal to her legendary career achievements.#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/skbxzj1CAj

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2024

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The Olympic gold medal is Ledecky’s eighth, which ties Jenny Thompson for the most for an American woman. Many would already consider Ledecky the greatest swimmer in the sport’s history, but she’s also making a strong case for the greatest female Olympic athlete ever.

Ledecky needs one more gold to tie Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina for the most gold medals for any female Olympian.

Ledecky, 27, has won 12 Olympic medals over four Games, and she’ll have a chance to add to that haul later this week with the women’s 800-meter freestyle (in which she is again a heavy favorite) and as part of the women’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay.

The Paris Olympics are only the second Games with the 1500 free as an event for women. Ledecky was vocal earlier in her career about wanting to swim the event — which has long been part of world championship meets — at the Olympics. It is fitting, of course, that she is the only woman to have won it so far. Her name belongs next to that sliver of history.

“It’s often said that distance swimming requires enduring an excruciating, mind-numbing tedium few other athletes experience,” Ledecky wrote in her memoir. “Hour upon hour, day after day, for months, years, decades, distance swimmers stare at the dark line marking the bottom of the pool, tracking and tracing it as we churn back and forth in our muffled bubble of virtual silence, plagued by a loop of our innermost thoughts, our bodies screaming in agony from the stress of pushing ourselves to the limits of exertion. For me, this is any given Saturday.

“I’m kidding, of course. I, for one, have never viewed my chosen sport as a source of pain. For me, swimming has been a pleasure, even when — or perhaps especially when — it tests my limits. That said, I’m not here to argue with the common perception that long-distance swims can brutalize the body and mind. They absolutely can.”

Ledecky has said she plans to swim in Los Angeles at the 2028 Olympic Games, a stance she reiterated Wednesday night.

“I don’t feel like I’m close to being finished in the sport yet,” Ledecky said. “After seeing the kind of support that the French athletes are getting here, I think all us U.S. athletes are thinking about how cool that could be in Los Angeles, having the home crowd. That would be amazing.”

For more on swimming at the Olympics, follow The Athletic’s live blog.

Besides, Ledecky has always loved long-distance swims and will keep swimming them. She trains with coach Anthony Nesty and the male distance swimmers at the University of Florida, and she grew emotional earlier this week after earning a bronze medal in the women’s 400 free and discussing how much that training group has meant to her as both a swimmer and a person.

On Wednesday, though, there were no tears, only smiles and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Ledecky had won gold in her most dominant event in the most dominant fashion, and all was right in the pool.

Required reading

(Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images; Graphic: John Bradford / The Athletic)