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NIL: what is it, and how did we get here?

A timeline of how college sports became what they are today

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San Diego State football exits the tunnel ahead of their matchup with New Mexico in Snapdragon stadium

Leo Taghert

In 2009, a former UCLA basketball player named Ed O’Bannon took a look at the new EA Sports video game and didn’t like what he saw. The power forward’s face and body had been used without his consent.

The class action lawsuit that O’Bannon and others filed in Oakland argued that the college basketball players had been unfairly denied compensation for their “name, image and likeness,” more commonly known as NIL.