By Tripp Henderson | Staff Writer
College athletes can now earn millions through endorsement deals, but what does that mean for their lives beyond sports? A team of Baylor researchers is working to find out.
The university received a major research grant from the Templeton Foundation for a project titled “Virtue on the Market: Navigating Character and Competition in the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Era of College Athletics.” The research will explore how the NIL era affects student-athletes’ well-being, character development and spiritual formation.
In July 2021, the NCAA adopted a policy allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness through endorsement and sponsorship deals. Since then, NIL has introduced new financial opportunities and pressures into college athletics.
Principal Investigator and former college athlete Laura Upenieks said the research project aims to study how NIL affects the “whole person.”
“We want to follow student-athletes over a span of two years and understand how these external pressures are affecting their day-to-day life, and in particular, their ability to build virtue [and] to build a religious and spiritual life,” Upenieks said.
Assistant professor of psychology at Hope College Dr. Elizabeth Bounds and professor of psychology and neuroscience Dr. Sarah Schnitker will join Upenieks on the research project. These three will also work alongside Dr. Paul Putz, director of the Faith and Sports Institute and assistant professor of Christianity and sports.
Putz said college athletics exists not for money, but to develop character and build community.
From 2025 through 2026, the New York Times reported that Division 1 schools paid out $1.77 billion to 34,915 athletes across 45 sports. That number excludes an additional $582 million from third-party NIL deals.
“There’s been more money coming into college sports from television and other new technologies and media,” Putz said. “But through it all, there’s still this belief and idea that sports are a place of education and character formation.”
The research aims to answer how NIL might affect student-athlete well-being, mental health, spiritual growth and their ability to flourish as human beings, Upenieks said.
“More is being asked of [student-athletes], more is being placed on them,” Upenieks said. “They’re dealing with increased pressure, increased media visibility and so does that impede or enhance their ability to develop character, virtue, religion and spirituality?”
With NIL developments being so recent and unprecedented, investigation into its effects has been limited, especially from a Christian perspective. Putz said this grant will allow Baylor to lead this research and explore how untapped Christian-oriented practices and resources may help address some of the issues with NIL.
“I think in a lot of ways, because NIL is so new, that we haven’t thought deeply about a distinctly Christian way of approaching NIL, and this is a chance for us to do that,” Putz said.
Both Putz and Upenieks highlighted that Baylor is unique in offering opportunities for Christian-centric research that most universities might not. Upenieks said many Division 1 colleges offer athlete programming focused on spiritual and religious formation, and Baylor has “seen itself as a leader in this category.”
The rise of NIL has not come without controversy. Critics argue it has blurred the line between professional and collegiate sports and has created an unhealthy “pay-for-play” environment. Additionally, some argue it can create competitive imbalances between wealthy, large schools and smaller schools.
Putz and Upenieks both said NIL has created challenges and opportunities for athletes.
“I think it absolutely is an opportunity. It can be life-changing money for so many athletes,” Upenieks said. “But I think with every opportunity, we also have to look at the flip side — are we serving [athletes] interests later on?”
One challenge Upenieks highlighted is that student-athletes risk tying their self-worth to their NIL deals. She also said it can make students feel as if they are only as valuable as their deal tells them they are.
A 2024 study published by Student-Athlete Insights reported that 11% of athletes say that NIL has added stress and pressure to their lives.
While NIL can negatively affect the mental health of an athlete, Putz said that it has helped students take ownership of their lives and how they present themselves in public at a younger age.
“Athletes are encouraged to talk about what they value, to talk about what is important to them, and to champion those values to the public,” Putz said.
This self-ownership has created a “permission structure” for students to talk about their faith, whether in press conferences, post-game interviews or on social media.
Putz also said guardrails are needed so student-athletes can benefit financially while maintaining a fair system of rules for college sports. Upenieks’ team aims to provide resources and data to help create these regulations.
“It’s research that’s not only going to be able to inform what happens at a place like Baylor, this is research that will strengthen and provide information and evidence-based data for colleges across the country,” Putz said. “And it’s really groundbreaking as well to have Baylor athletics as a partner in this — it’s a level of research related to high-level athletics and virtue formation that hasn’t been done.”
The project will release its data in 2028. Upenieks said her team’s work is laying a research foundation she hopes will extend beyond Baylor to the national level, and that whatever the results may be, she hopes “that athletic departments take the time to care about what we found and to understand.”
“Ultimately, it is how can NIL be a space where we continue to care for student athletes as whole people and set them up for success in the rest of their life,” Putz said. “And I think this research is going to provide some areas where we can grow in that, and we can improve.”
