The question matters because men’s basketball occupies a peculiar position in the economics of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The sport generates billions of dollars in television and ticket revenue, anchored by the annual NCAA tournament, yet the players who produce that value receive no direct salary. Graduation success rate, the metric the NCAA introduced in the early 2000s, was designed to hold programs accountable for the academic outcomes of their athletes. Unlike the federal cohort graduation rate, which counts only athletes who graduate within six years of enrollment at the same institution, the graduation success rate credits transfers who graduate elsewhere and includes athletes who leave in good academic standing. It is therefore a more forgiving but also more comprehensive measure of whether a program is genuinely educating the young people it recruits.

The economic logic of why NIL might affect graduation rates runs in both directions, which is precisely what makes the empirical question interesting. On one side, the opportunity cost of studying has risen. A player with a large social media audience or a marketable personal brand faces a real trade-off: an hour spent filming promotional content or negotiating with a collective is an hour not spent in a study hall. If the marginal return to brand-building exceeds the perceived marginal return to a degree, rational agents may reallocate time away from academics. The explosion of the transfer portal has compounded this effect, since players who change schools multiple times in search of better compensation face disrupted credit accumulation, lost progress toward major requirements, and in some cases semester gaps that push graduation further away.

On the other side, several mechanisms push in the opposite direction. NIL income reduces financial pressure that has historically pushed some athletes to leave school early for professional contracts overseas or in the NBA G League. A player earning meaningful endorsement money may now be able to remain enrolled, complete a degree, and still support his family, something the amateur model never allowed. Boosters and collectives, whose contributions now flow partly through universities, have an institutional interest in keeping eligible players eligible, and academic eligibility rules still require satisfactory progress toward a degree. Programs with lucrative NIL ecosystems may therefore invest more heavily in academic support, tutoring, and degree-completion programs, not out of altruism but because a player who flunks out is a player who cannot play. In principle, then, NIL could raise graduation rates even as it lowers study time, and disentangling these forces requires careful data analysis.

This is the analytical terrain that Messina and Sommers set out to map. Their study, accepted by the Atlantic Economic Journal in September 2026 and published online on the first of October, examines graduation success rates across Division I men’s basketball programs in the period surrounding the introduction of NIL rights. The authors, both affiliated with the Department of Economics at Middlebury College, bring to the question a long tradition of sports economics scholarship that treats college athletics as a laboratory for studying incentives, human capital, and labor markets. The paper includes supplementary material detailing its data construction and statistical procedures, and the authors acknowledge comments from Annabelle Fowler in preparing the final version.

The methodological challenge such studies face is substantial, and it is worth spelling out why. Graduation success rates are reported annually by the NCAA for each program, but they are rolling four-year cohort measures, which means any effect of NIL, introduced in 2021, would only fully appear in data released several years later. A player who enrolled in 2021, the first NIL class, would graduate by 2027 at the earliest, so the earliest post-NIL GSR figures blend pre-policy and post-policy cohorts. Researchers must therefore be careful about attributing any observed change to NIL alone. Confounding factors abound: the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted academic life for cohorts graduating in the early 2020s, the NCAA granted an extra year of eligibility that extended many careers, and the transfer portal, which predates NIL but accelerated alongside it, independently reshapes graduation statistics by moving students between institutions.

There is also a deeper conceptual issue about what graduation success rates actually measure in the NIL era. The metric was designed for a world in which the primary exit option for a talented underclassman was declaring for the professional draft. Today, a player who leaves school after two years to pursue a full-time career as a paid athlete, whether through lucrative collectives, professional opportunities, or personal branding, counts against his original program’s rate unless he graduates elsewhere in good standing. Some economists would argue that this makes GSR an increasingly poor welfare measure: a player who forgoes a low-completion-probability degree for genuine earning opportunities may be behaving optimally, not failing. Others counter that the vast majority of basketball players will never earn a living from the sport, and that for them the degree remains the single most valuable asset college athletics confers, which is why any erosion of academic outcomes would represent a genuine social cost.

The stakes extend beyond basketball. Football has followed a similar trajectory, and the legal environment continues to evolve, with litigation challenging NCAA compensation rules and several states enacting or revising their own NIL statutes. If rigorous empirical work finds that graduation rates have held steady or improved, it would strengthen the case that athlete compensation and academic mission can coexist, and would undercut arguments for rolling back NIL rights. If the data instead reveal a systematic decline, particularly concentrated at programs with the most aggressive collective spending, it would give regulators and university presidents concrete evidence that the current unregulated market imposes academic costs, potentially justifying eligibility-linked compensation structures or enhanced academic support mandates. Either result would be informative, which is why studies of this kind are likely to multiply as cleaner post-2021 data become available.

What the Messina and Sommers paper ultimately contributes is a disciplined economic framing of a debate that has so far been dominated by anecdote. Coaches lament players who treat one-year stints as paid stopovers; athletic directors tout rising academic scores; commentators assert that money has ruined the student-athlete ideal. None of these claims, on its own, constitutes evidence. By assembling program-level graduation data spanning the transition into the NIL era and applying standard statistical tools to detect whether the policy shift coincided with a change in academic outcomes, the study converts a loud argument into a testable hypothesis. The answer it reaches will be scrutinized, replicated, and extended, but the mere existence of such analysis marks a maturing of the conversation around athlete compensation.

For the young men who dunk on national television each winter, the stakes are personal and immediate. College basketball players graduate at lower rates than most of their classmates, and the sport’s one-and-done culture has long strained the fiction that every scholarship athlete is primarily a student. NIL has added money to that equation without adding clarity. Whether endorsement deals become a bridge that helps more players finish their degrees, or a current that sweeps them out of the classroom and into a precarious gig economy of paid appearances, is an empirical question that economists are only now beginning to answer. The Middlebury study is an early and careful entry in what will surely become one of the defining research literatures of the post-amateur era of college sport, and its central question, whether dollars and diplomas can coexist on the hardwood, will shape policy debates for years to come.

Subject of Research: The effect of name, image, and likeness compensation on graduation success rates in Division I men's college basketball

Article Title: Has NIL Affected Graduation Success Rates at College Basketball Programs?

Article References: Messina, C. G., & Sommers, P. M. (2026). Has NIL Affected Graduation Success Rates at College Basketball Programs?. Atlantic Economic Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11293-026-09863-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11293-026-09863-5

Keywords: NIL, college basketball, graduation success rate, NCAA, student-athletes, sports economics, transfer portal, athlete compensation, academic outcomes, Division I athletics, Middlebury College, Atlantic Economic Journal

The study, led by Taylor Rodriguez, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Mississippi, and Allie Bond, assistant professor in the Rutgers Department of Urban-Global Public Health, surveyed 78 student-athletes drawn from NCAA Division I, Division II and Division III universities. By spanning all three competitive tiers, the researchers captured perspectives from athletes in large, resource-rich athletic programs as well as those at smaller institutions where mental health staffing may be thinner. The survey asked participants about suicidal thoughts and about their views on prevention strategies, including whether such training should be compulsory. According to the researchers, no previous survey had directly asked student-athletes whether they believe suicide prevention training should be mandatory, even though earlier studies have established that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among NCAA athletes.

The answer to that previously unasked question was, in the researchers’ words, an overwhelming yes. Rodriguez suggested that the athletes’ strong desire for education may be rooted in personal experience. Since nearly 40 percent of respondents had experienced suicidal thoughts themselves, she noted, the demand for information may stem from having faced difficulties without adequate tools to navigate them. In her view, if the NCAA recognized these common struggles by requiring athletes to learn about suicide and mental health, it could help athletes feel more supported and more comfortable reaching out for help when they need it.

Bond, herself a former student-athlete, framed the results as a direct message from the athletes to the people and institutions responsible for their welfare. Student-athletes are saying they are struggling and that they want resources, she said, and if clinicians, researchers and communities continue not to provide that support and not to address their struggles, they are failing to meet athletes’ needs. Her comments underscore a central tension in collegiate athletics: the same institutions that celebrate athletes’ physical performance often lack systematic mechanisms for identifying and responding to psychological distress.

Part of what makes college athletes a distinct population, the researchers argue, is the cluster of stressors unique to collegiate sports. Athletes must juggle expectations from coaches and fans, navigate demanding travel schedules, and contend with the constant possibility that an injury or a dip in performance could cost them their athletic scholarship or their name, image and likeness deals, the commercial arrangements that now allow college players to earn money from their personal brands. Unlike other students, an athlete’s academic and financial stability can hinge on what happens on the field, adding a high-stakes performance pressure that few campus peers experience.

To these familiar pressures, a newer and rapidly growing stressor has been added: legalized mobile sports betting. The NCAA has reported that one in three high-profile student-athletes has received threats or abusive messages from someone with a betting interest in their performance. Bond described the dynamic in blunt terms: a wide receiver misses a pass, someone loses money, and suddenly that student is being attacked on social media. She emphasized that these are 19- and 20-year-old kids, and questioned how they are being equipped to respond to that hate while still trying to pass classes and succeed academically. The convergence of gambling-driven harassment with existing performance pressures illustrates how the mental health landscape for college athletes has shifted in recent years, and why the researchers believe prevention programs must be designed around athletes’ actual circumstances rather than generic student populations.

The survey also revealed a telling pattern in how athletes seek help. Most student respondents said they would turn to teammates about mental health concerns before approaching counselors, psychologists or even their coaches. Bond said this preference makes sense, because people generally feel more comfortable talking to those who walk a similar path in life and can understand their experiences. But she warned that this reliance on peer networks carries an implication that athletic programs cannot ignore: if athletes are most likely to confide in one another, then teams themselves must be given the tools to respond to crises, and teammates must have the opportunity to follow up after an initial conversation.

That insight shapes one of the study’s most important practical conclusions. Bond argued that a one-time training session is going to have a really hard time moving the needle on stigma. Instead, she said, the cultural norms within athletic departments need to change so that mental well-being is promoted continuously while supporting a high-risk group. In other words, the goal is not merely to deliver information once per season but to embed mental health literacy into the everyday fabric of team life, making conversations about suicide and psychological distress as routine as conversations about physical injury and recovery.

Rodriguez echoed that vision, stating that student-athletes want and need more suicide prevention information while in college, and that it is important to learn how to better support them and ensure that athletics programs and universities are openly discussing suicide and mental health. Teaching athletes about available resources and making those resources readily accessible may be one important step toward that goal, she said. The researchers’ recommendations point toward mandatory, sustained training that accounts for the realities of collegiate sport, including scholarship insecurity, name, image and likeness pressures, travel demands, coach and fan expectations, and the harassment linked to sports betting.

The stakes of inaction are difficult to overstate. With suicide ranking as the second-leading cause of death among NCAA athletes, and with nearly four in ten surveyed athletes reporting lifetime suicidal thoughts, the study suggests that mental health risk in collegiate athletics is not an edge case but a widespread experience. At the same time, the near-universal support for mandatory training among respondents indicates that athletes are not resistant to intervention; they are actively requesting it. The researchers hope their findings will prompt the NCAA and its member institutions to treat suicide prevention education not as an optional enhancement but as a core component of athlete welfare, one that gives young athletes the information, resources and cultural permission to seek help before a crisis unfolds.

Subject of Research: Suicide risk and help-seeking behavior among United States collegiate student-athletes

Article Title: Student-athletes report need for suicide prevention, training

Article References: Student-athletes report need for suicide prevention, training. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: student-athletes, suicide prevention, NCAA, mental health, Behavioral Sciences, University of Mississippi, Rutgers University, sports betting, help-seeking behavior, collegiate athletics, mandatory training, NIL deals