Todd Jones, President of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio, said it’s been tough as initially, smaller schools didn’t know what to think.

“It's easy to see what an ideal would be for division one football players whose images are used in video games and to become multimillion dollar advertising stars going forward," Jones said. "With our schools, we just didn't expect that kind of revenue generation. We didn't expect it to be much smaller, but we just didn't know how it would be going forward.”

As Division 1 athletes across the country have made money with the new rules in place, Jones said it’s not just the schools facing challenges, but athletes at smaller schools too.

Jones said there are two challenges in helping students understand the limits and dangers of contracting. Jones said the second challenge is helping students understand the opportunities and how not to interfere with their collegiate careers both academically and athletically. 

"The purpose of education is to help the whole student and helping them understand that somebody who is offering them a contract may be binding them to something going forward that's not to their advantage,” Jones said. 

There’s been concern that the new NIL rules could create an extra burden on smaller schools who don’t have the resources to oversee it all, but Jones sees more people becoming involved to help.

“The beauty of it is that there are a lot of people jumping in to help in part, because I think they want to facilitate students making money for them," Jones said.