If the NIL market feels bewildering right now, there’s a reason for that. There is a lot of information out there about the marketplace, but no one has it all. It’s split up, quite unevenly at that, among a lot of different parties.
In economics and legal jargon, there is information asymmetry. There is an entire field of study of how the different amounts of information that different parties have affects outcomes in contracts and markets, and how all that goes is beyond the scope of this piece (and beyond my expertise).
That said, it’s not too hard to grasp the basics.