Mississippi’s Governor Tate Reeves signed the state’s name, image, and likeness law on March 30, 2021 with the legislation being enacted just weeks later in April. Better known today as NIL, the law was set to go into effect on July 1. This action made Mississippi the seventh state to pass a law that would allow student athletes at its institutions to profit from their name, image, and likeness and protect them from being punished for doing so. Such protection seemed necessary at the time because the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had not yet changed any of its policies to allow NIL on the campuses of its member institutions.
Since California passed legislation in 2019 on the matter, NCAA universities recognized that the needle was moving toward college athletes being able to accept endorsement money in some form, with or without the NCAA’s approval. With the push from state laws being signed, the NCAA adopted an interim policy that would allow athletes to participate in NIL activity.
It was June 30, just a day before most of the state laws that had been signed would officially go into effect.
The summer NIL became a reality for student athletes and athletic departments across the country, Jennifer Saxon took on a new role as Senior Woman Administrator at Ole Miss. Saxon had spent the last five years serving athletes in the social responsibility and engagement space. Her relationships with and proximity to the university’s student athletes made her a crucial partner in helping Ole Miss Athletics figure out how to navigate this new aspect of college athletics.
“It was becoming a little overwhelming for our students,” said Saxon. “All of our athletes were just getting hit up from agents, people that said they were agents, and they were in their DMs, which was really really overwhelming.”
According to Saxon, Ole Miss’ starting quarterback Matt Corral was one of these athletes. Corral quickly saw first hand how profitable and appealing his personal brand was to other people. After all, people were not calling the NIL scene the “Wild West” for nothing.
Everything about name, image, and likeness was new. Sure, as Saxon explains, the idea of someone’s personal brand or celebrity being used for another company or business’ marketing purposes had already existed. The difference between the NIL opportunity coming to college campuses and the one that individuals have been profiting from for decades is that student athletes competing in the NCAA could never capitalize on it. That is, until now.
“Marketing dollars were already being spent in the realm of sports and entertainment, right,” said Saxon. “They’re already there. It’s just a larger group of people that can now access that.”
Reworking the Foundation to Fit NIL
Prior to NIL being enacted, Ole Miss Athletics was committed to ensuring its student athletes did more than simply focus on attending practice and winning games and competitions while potentially obtaining a degree they may or may not use in the future. In fact, Saxon has spent much of her career at Ole Miss working to enhance the student athlete experience. That’s precisely what her former title was: Director for Student-Athlete Enhancement.
Even as she shifted to overseeing things like Title IX coordination and human resources within the athletics department, Saxon still remained heavily involved with student athletes as the supervisor for the Social Responsibility and Engagement department, which launched in January 2021. The goal of this department is to “advance the social impact and personal growth” of Ole Miss student-athletes and Athletics’ staff members.
Before NIL brought about the necessity to educate student athletes about how to engage in the opportunity, Saxon and her team worked to equip athletes to build their own personal brand that would carry them into a future after sports. This push to prepare athletes off of their field of play took on the form of offering resume workshops, hosting speed interviewing sessions with employers, and placing students in the community to serve Oxford residents.
With this foundation in honing student athlete’s life skills in mind, Saxon sat down with her colleague Matt McLaughlin, who at the time worked with the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation on development and major gift donations. McLaughlin was, in many ways, the ideal candidate to help Saxon brainstorm what an NIL program at Ole Miss would need to look like.
His efforts with Saxon appeared to foreshadow the role he fills today at Ole Miss after the athletic department created an entirely new position for him in January 2025. McLaughlin now oversees the NIL space at Ole Miss. But, let’s pivot back to the summer of 2021 where it all began.
“We just started writing stuff down,” said Saxon. “I thought, ‘Well, there’s no reason we can’t shift SRE right? Life skills is turning into NIL.’”
“Life skills” is a shortened phrase for the educational sessions and events Saxon and her colleagues created to enhance the student athlete experience. Now, Saxon had to figure out how to enhance an athlete’s opportunity to profit from their NIL. To her, the root of NIL was a personal brand.
“We’ve always tried to help student athletes brand themselves to be able to get jobs,” said Saxon. “We were doing those things on a regular basis, and it was just having to shift.”
Throughout the process of reworking this foundation, Saxon and those involved with building the NIL framework for how Ole Miss athletes could successfully engage in NIL constantly came back to one thing: “What do we want to position our student athletes for?”
In May 2021, the Ole Miss productions staff created a short video that featured student athletes from a compilation of years. The video centered around the fact that numerous former Rebel athletes had gone on to become “stars.” At one point, the narrator says, “To realize your potential and take you to the next level.”
Saxon remembers watching the video and being struck by the clear and simple message it was relaying.
“All I kept hearing was ‘next level,’” said Saxon. “Come to Ole Miss, and we’re going to help you take your brand to the next level. So, I just kept hearing ‘next level,’ and I was like, ‘Alright, we’re gonna go with that.’”
Next Level is precisely what the Ole Miss Athletics’ NIL program was named, and with the creation of a name came putting together a team that would allow the program to fire on all cylinders.
The Next Level Team
Saxon’s role with NIL on campus is aligned with what much of her career in college athletics has centered around: student athlete relationships. In saying that, athletes often find themselves in her office with questions about prospective offers, obtaining deals, and finding partnerships that value their interests.
In any given meeting with a student athlete, Saxon always likes to ask them, “What are the three things that you want to make sure you get out of this experience aside from your sport?” Their answers to this question helps Saxon to offer the right athletes not only NIL deals but unique internships and career opportunities when they come across her desk.
Contrary to what the public may believe, Saxon suggests that these opportunities are open to everyone. However, not everyone is willing to capitalize on them.
“Everybody doesn’t want to work really hard, and NIL is a full time job,” said Saxon. “So, you got to work.”
In her experiences with the participation from student athletes at Ole Miss since NIL went into effect nearly four years ago, Saxon notes that some athletes are not as intrigued by the NIL space as others. Surprisingly, it’s also not always the most talented athletes who are the most engaged.
“We have some students who are more interested than others,” said Saxon. “Some students that maybe are not the best at their sports, but they’re really in tune and have a lot of followers, that accessibility works.”
With this in mind, Saxon and the Next Level team have tried to approach their roles as being considered liaisons and resources for the student athletes who desire to develop their own personal brand while tapping into the compensation element that NIL adds.
“I want students to get opportunities, and we’re here to help them,” said Saxon.
Alongside Saxon in the Next Level program’s efforts are Ravin Gilbert, Emily Forsythe, and Ane Debro. While there are others who help with NIL duties at Ole Miss, this group of four females serves as the primary engine for name, image, and likeness within athletics.
Each of them plays different yet crucial roles in ensuring that student athletes both have an opportunity to successfully engage in NIL and most importantly, remain eligible while doing so.
Ravin Gilbert, for example, assumed Jennifer Saxon’s former role as the Director of Social Responsibility and Engagement. In doing this, Gilbert was responsible for threading the completely new and unknown venture that was name, image, and likeness into the department’s existing programming. Within Next Level, Gilbert terms her position as the NIL educator.
“I educate student athletes on different opportunities that are out there,” said Gilbert, “as well as provide opportunities for them to learn more about brand management, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and NIL just in general of our program.”
When NIL began, Gilbert took it upon herself to go out into the Oxford community and educate businesses and companies on name, image, and likeness as a means of creating potential partnerships for student-athletes.
“I think a lot of businesses or companies look at opportunities that are in the media,” said Gilbert,” and they get a different perception of what NIL is. So, it’s my duty to kind of educate them on the possibilities that are out there.”
Those perceptions from the media that Gilbert is referring to tend to be that every college athlete is making millions of dollars from NIL and transferring schools to find the best paycheck. Gilbert recognizes what the public views as gray areas in NIL, but she also encourages them to do more research on how effective NIL has been even without athletes being given large sums of money.
Gilbert thinks of former Ole Miss football player KD Hill who used much of his own money before being given support through NIL to provide pizzas each Thursday evening to children at the local Housing Authority in Oxford.
She also refers to athletes who have been able to start their own foundations through the empowerment of NIL. Ole Miss women's basketball player Madison Scott started a non-profit organization focused on creating opportunities for “youth through basketball skill development and life skill preparation,” according to her website.
These are just two examples of student-athletes who have focused many of their NIL efforts on bettering the community where they both attend college and represent on their respective playing fields. However, this is not always what business owners or local companies are seeing associated with the term “NIL.”
“I think those are the success stories that need to be on the forefront,” said Gilbert, “but I don’t know if those are necessarily the ones that may sell, you know.”
Regardless of what is selling or not, Ole Miss athletes are being approached with NIL opportunities, and Gilbert is often contacted by business or companies both within the Oxford community and across the country who have deals to offer, both in the form of money or “in-kind” payments like goods or services.
These opportunities are shared with student-athletes directly through their school emails and an application called INFLCR, which is also where NIL deals are reported and approved electronically.
With the gift of NIL also comes the responsibility to manage these finances. As the NIL educator, Gilbert ensures that student-athletes understand they are required to pay taxes on any income they generate that is over $600 dollars. Each spring, every Ole Miss student-athlete sits in on a tax education session facilitated by James Moore, an consulting firm specializing in accounting and tax resources.
In relation to legal requirements outside of taxes, Ane Debro and Emily Forsythe enter the picture.
Emily Forsythe was originally brought into the Next Level program to ensure athletes operating in the NIL space were complying with the NCAA policy and not jeopardizing their eligibility. She is the assistant athletics director for compliance at Ole Miss, a role which often requires a law degree like the one she received from Marquette University in 2017.
The need for legal expertise when it comes to overseeing general NCAA compliance stems from the extensive amount of regulations that universities and student-athletes are required to follow. Now, with NIL, the compliance area is a bit “more interesting” according to Forysthe.
“The NCAA manual is like 500 pages,” said Forsythe. “We are used to having that guidance, that precedent, but now we are in essence, creating it.”
Her role within Next Level has evolved over the past few years, but for the most part, she now does everything from in-house and outside entity NIL education to approving student-athlete deals and working with the Grove Collective.
When an athlete reports an NIL deal in their INFLCR app, Forsythe is the person on the other end of the transaction looking over the deal before eventually approving or denying it based on legitimacy.
“I will go in,” said Forsythe, “I will view the transaction, making sure that they’re doing the work, or that there is work. It’s not pay-for-play. That’s probably the number one thing that I am looking for is to ensure that the student-athlete is being required to do some kind of work to receive compensation.”
Forysthe’s legal background is especially crucial when she’s reviewing contracts presented to student-athletes by brands or companies. It is not uncommon for her to see unclear language in a contract or something that seems to jeopardize the athlete.
“I am looking out for any curious language terms that I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not so sure this is in the best interest of the student-athlete,’” said Forsythe.
Though, per NCAA rule, an institution cannot limit an athlete’s ability to engage in NIL, Forsythe’s role as a compliance officer does mean that she is concerned with ensuring student-athletes are not involved in anything that will harm their collegiate athletics experience.
“My job, even as a whole, in compliance,” said Forsythe, “is to protect the interests of our student-athletes.”
With respect to knowledge of the state NIL law and its ever-changing nature, Ane Debro assumes the responsibilities of this area as the Associate General Counsel for Athletics. In 2022, Debro joined the staff after serving as General Counsel for Alabama A&M for 12 years. Today, her role at Ole Miss looks largely the same but with everything being tied to sports.
Within Next Level, Debro works in conjunction with Forsythe and compliance to ensure that nothing in an athlete’s NIL contract is prohibiting the Mississippi NIL law. Debro will not see every contract, but if compliance flags a contract for fear it interferes with state law or any contacts the university has, she is the one to review it.
“I look strictly at the legal aspect,” said Debro. “‘Are they using a prohibited item? Does it conflict with the university contract?’ Those types of prohibitions are what I’m looking for.”
Some of these prohibitions include controlled substances, supplements, alcohol, marijuana, and gambling. It is also possible that a brand like Pepsi for instance, may want to sponsor an athlete, but this would violate the university’s contract with Coca-Cola entirely.
Debro spends her time reporting to the university’s General Counsel as well as remaining up to date on the state NIL law. She also attends conferences to engage with others who work in NCAA athletics while reading information online about any issues or changes in the NIL space. This challenge of constantly learning and stretching herself to ensure student-athletes at Ole Miss have the best spot on the starting line to engage in NIL is one of Debro’s favorite parts of her role.
“NIL is really changing the way athletics is moving forward,” said Debro, “so I love being on the cutting edge of things and just trying to figure out how to make it work in the best light for my client.”
All in all, these four core members of Next Level have helped student-athletes secure deals in the form of both money and services over the last four years while maintaining good standing with the NCAA.
From helping female athletes partner with skincare brand Good Molecules to assisting athletes in being chosen by programs sponsored by Meta and INFLCR and providing professional opportunities that turn into internships and jobs, Ole Miss’ NIL program is doing just what it set out do: take the student athlete experience to the next level.