NIL Go System Creates Problems For Utah State, Other Schools
Jul 10, 2025, 3:53 PM | Updated: Jul 11, 2025, 10:29 am
Back endzone pylon at Maverik Stadium, home of the Utah State Aggies. (Photo courtesy of Utah State Athletics)
(Photo courtesy of Utah State Athletics)
SALT LAKE CITY – It seems the headaches being caused by name, image, and likeness deals, more commonly known as NIL deals in college athletics, are never-ending.
The NIL Go system, designed to help schools and athletes arrange third-party deals, appears not to be meeting the needs of student-athletes or their institutions.
Director of Utah State’s Blue A Collective Dalton K. Forsythe recently criticized the College Sports Commission and NIL Go for failing to offer clear and transparent guidelines for paying student-athletes.
“I’m disappointed in the College Sports Commission for its failure to adequately roll out the NIL Go system,” Forsythe wrote in a post on X.
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I’m disappointed in the College Sports Commission for its failure to adequately roll out the NIL GO system—and for doing so without clear, transparent guidelines.
— Dalton K. Forsythe (@daltonkf68) July 10, 2025
Forsythe went on to detail a website that often crashed, a lack of timely reviews when NIL deals are submitted, and a generally dysfunctional system.
“We worked to input our NIL deals well ahead of the July 1 deadline, as did most other schools I’ve spoken with,” Forsythe said. “Despite that, we’ve faced nonstop issues. The NIL GO website was frequently down, and once deals were submitted, they often timed out every 5 days due to a lack of timely review by CSC staff. Some of our deals have timed out multiple times—not because of any compliance issue, but because the system simply isn’t being managed at the pace NIL requires.
Beyond those problems, Forsythe explained that every NIL deal backed by a collective is being denied.
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“The College Sports Commission has taken the position that collectives cannot serve a ‘valid business purpose’—a standard that was never clearly communicated before implementation.”
On July 10, the CSC issued a memo that read, “An entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit, does not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement of Rule 22.1.3.”
Forsythe finished, “It feels like turning in the biggest assignment of your life—on time—only for the teacher to say: ‘We changed the instructions. You failed.'”
