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I don't know how else to spell it out. by manofdillon

In a normal business transaction for someone's likeness and image, the amount they are paid is rationally related to the value that the person using their likeness and image expects to get from its use. I.e., they're paid what their image and likeness is worth. When Nike pays Tiger, they're not paying him for anything other than the benefit they expect their association with him to bring Nike.

In a college athletics situation, without enforcement mechanisms, one can imagine an image and likeness payment being used to hid bribery. I don't think anyone thinks a booster should be able to pay a guy $1M to go to their school (I'm using big round numbers for simplicity, no I don't think there are tons of guys out there willing to pay high school kids $1M).

But one could easily imagine someone making a payment to a kid for the use of their image and likeness that is far greater than what the use of their image and likeness is actually worth to essentially cover up a bribe. You say "having a top 5 star recruit endorse that business might lead to more attention on the business which would lead to more consumers." Absolutely, and the payment to the 5 star recruit should be rationally related to expected increase in business. If you expect his endorsement to get you $100k more business, pay him $100k, not $1M. But if he gets paid $1M for an anticipated $100k bump in business, we're not really talking about paying him for his image and likeness.

I just don't see how you can say "let kids get paid for their image and likeness and we don't need any rules, the market will sort it out," unless you're just fine accepting that there will be some non-zero number of instances in which bag men and boosters are paying kids "for the use of their imagine and likeness" not for bona fide business purposes (i.e. the value they expect to get from the kid's endorsement), but to bribe the kid to go to their school.