As of this week, college sports are back, and with them the second season under House v. NCAA, the landmark settlement and first framework in which Division I colleges and universities may pay student-athletes directly. For most of the roster, the compliance questions are the now-familiar ones about the annual cap, clearinghouse review, and collective deals. For international student-athletes, the questions are different and considerably harder. Roughly 25,000 international student-athletes compete in the NCAA, and almost all of them hold F-1 student visas.

For those student-athletes, immigration law, not the NCAA rulebook, sets the outer limits on what they can accept from colleges and universities as it relates to the commercial value of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Because the money now moves directly from the institution rather than third-party collectives, the consequences of getting it wrong are no longer the athlete's alone.

Colleges and universities, along with their international student-athletes, are faced with a new environment in which they must carefully navigate revenue sharing opened up by House while adhering to increasing scrutiny under U.S. immigration laws.

Immigration Rules, Not NCAA Rules, Set the Limit

A student holding an F-1 academic visa is admitted solely to pursue a course of study, and may work only within the narrow categories federal regulations authorize pertaining to how international students with these visas may work:

• On-campus employment that is an integral part of the educational program, capped at 20 hours per week while school is in session.
   
• Off-campus employment, available only after one full academic year and only on severe economic hardship grounds.
   
• Curricular practical training, which must be an integral part of an established curriculum and directly related to the student's major, authorized in Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) before the work begins.
   
• Optional practical training, including the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) extension, which must be directly related to the student's major and authorized by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) before work begins.

Commercial NIL activity does not fit any of these categories. Filming a commercial, posting sponsored content, signing autographs, or making a paid appearance is not on-campus work integral to an educational program nor curriculum-based training, and it is not directly related to an academic major.

The compliance problem is compounded by how broadly the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and State read "employment." Authorization is generally required whenever a foreign national performs services expecting compensation of any kind, including non-monetary benefits, and a position normally occupied by a paid worker can count as employment even when it is unpaid. On that reading, even an uncompensated post that benefits a brand or a collective may be treated as unauthorized.

The Two Channels That Carry Less Risk

Genuinely passive income is the first channel for student-athletes and higher education institutions that carries less risk. Royalties and licensing revenue, such as a group licensing agreement covering apparel or jersey sales, is generally treated as permissible because it is not work. The structure has to be an actual agreement. An arrangement dressed up as passive licensing while the student-athlete actually creates content or makes appearances will not survive scrutiny under both the current immigration rules and NCAA rules.

Services performed entirely outside the United States are the second channel. The unauthorized employment rules reach only work performed within the country, so a student-athlete can generally perform NIL services at home over a break, or abroad while traveling with the team. This is a genuine channel but a narrow one: the services must actually be performed outside the United States, not merely paid for from abroad.

Revenue Sharing Is the Hardest Question, and It Is Unresolved

The House settlement permits opting-in Division I schools to provide direct benefits and compensation worth up to 22% of the Power Five schools' average athletic revenues. That pool started above $20 million per school in 2025-26 and is projected to reach roughly $32.9 million by 2034-35, opening an estimated $1.6 billion in new annual compensation. Each campus allocates its own revenue-sharing pool without NCAA oversight of the distribution.

The settlement authorizes the payments, but it does not solve the immigration problem. Because a revenue-share payment comes directly from the school and is, in substance, tied to performance in the sport, it looks like active, wage-type income rather than passive licensing. Practitioners have warned that USCIS may view these student-athletes as de facto employees earning what amounts to a salary for playing their sport.

There is no consensus and no controlling guidance. Some take the position that any direct school-to-athlete payment is active income regardless of framing; others argue it is analogous to permissible licensing or jersey-sales revenue. The settlement classes were not limited to U.S. citizens, so international student-athletes may share in back-pay damages, but forward-looking revenue sharing remains highly complex because a specific visa status may be required to receive the payments.

Disclosure makes informal workarounds impractical. Take for example how the College Sports Commission (CSC) approved a new enforcement policy effective July 1, 2026. Under the policy, the CSC will not apply the fair-market-value range of compensation review for deals between $600 and $15,000 until a student-athlete exceeds $50,000 in associated deals in an academic year. NIL deals structured around immigration scrutiny are even more challenging and have sometimes life-altering consequences for the international student-athlete, as the contract terms may be visible to a central regulator, not buried in a private contract.

What Violations Cost

The consequences of a violation are immediate. International student-athletes who perform unauthorized work can fall out of F-1 status right away. That can mean termination of their SEVIS record, immediate loss of work authorization options, loss of the normal grace period to remain in the United States after the program ends, and the need to leave the country and start over with a new student record. It can also disrupt future eligibility for internships, post-graduation work authorization, or a later visa strategy that would have allowed paid athletic or endorsement activity.

The downstream effects can be just as serious. An athlete who falls out of status may lose the ability to change to another visa from inside the United States, may be blocked from adjusting to permanent residence, and may need to leave the country before pursuing a new immigration strategy. That is especially important for elite student-athletes, because an unauthorized NIL deal can undercut the very path to becoming a professional athlete in the United States — such as an O-1 classification — that might later make paid athletic or endorsement activity lawful.

The institutional consequences can be significant. If a school knows, or should know, that an international student-athlete has engaged in unauthorized work, it may have to act quickly in SEVIS, stop treating the student like they are legally in status, and document the response.

Poor handling can potentially trigger government review, recertification problems, loss of authority to sponsor international students, and serious reputational harm. Direct school NIL payments also raise the stakes because the institution is no longer a bystander; it may become part of the compliance problem.

Recommended Compliance Hygiene

• Consider identifying every international student-athlete on the roster before any revenue-share or NIL payment is processed, and routing those athletes through a separate approval track rather than the general compliance workflow.
   
• Consider having immigration counsel review the characterization of each proposed payment as active or passive, with the analysis documented at the time rather than reconstructed later.
   
• Maintain a written protocol for CPT, SEVIS review, and any required termination workflow so the school can show when it learned the facts, how it evaluated them, and what steps it took in response.
   
• Train coaches and compliance staff to flag international student-athletes early, because they may not be able to sign the same NIL agreement used for domestic student-athletes.

Absent guidance from the DHS, USCIS, or Congress on the core active-versus-passive question, schools and athletes must run their own risk analyses. The distinction the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) draws in practice is between an institution that finds and reports problems itself and one that learns of them when the government does.

As the college athletics season opens, preparation and taking steps to avoid risk will better help colleges and universities avoid the watchful eye of the government.

Check out our prior alert on DHS’s final rule effectively ending ‘duration of status’ for international students and scholars here.

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