hastingstribune
DALLAS In the last several years of his 25 seasons as the women's basketball coach at mid-major South Florida, Jose Fernandez spoke more with agents and lawyers than parents.
Discussions with prospective athletes centered not around education, but what they would earn in Year 1.
He noticed more players hitting the transfer portal and less willing to wait their turn.
"If I'm doing this in college, you know what, might as well go coach the best players in the world," Fernandez, now the Dallas Wings coach, told The Dallas Morning News.
Five years after the dawn of name, image and likeness, the world Fernandez previously inhabited looks very different.
Fewer athletes stay with one program over the course of their collegiate careers, and the burden of fundraising to retain and acquire them has been placed on coaches.
Bidding wars have allowed the highest spenders to obtain the best talent, and programs have started hiring general managers, mirroring their staffs to resemble a professional team's front office.
With money on the line, teens and families have found themselves in complex situations, particularly in states that have embraced NIL at the high school level something Texas has yet to allow.
"The genie's out of the bottle," Fernandez said.
But the WNBA, where Fernandez has found success as the new Wings coach, needed that domino to fall in the NCAA.
The visibility female athletes gained through NIL gave rise to stars such as Wings guard Paige Bueckers, Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark and Atlanta Dream forward Angel Reese figures who have helped grow women's basketball exponentially.
Their on-court skills, along with exposure from repping major brands on TV and social media while still in college, helped them amass large followings they carried into the pros.
During negotiations for the WNBA's new landmark collective bargaining agreement, which created the league's first million-dollar athletes, leaders in the players' union leveraged the star power of young talents such as Bueckers and the new fans they brought to the game.
In a world without NIL, which changed the trajectory of women's sports like Title IX did 55 years ago, maybe that leverage doesn't exist.
"It's transformational," Bueckers said after a recent practice.
"..
It's really cool to see because we feel like there's so many amazing women who have paved the way that didn't get the same NIL opportunities that we had.
So to be a part of that, I'm extremely grateful for it." Bueckers at forefront of NIL boom Not even 24 hours after the Wings beat the Las Vegas Aces in a preseason game, Bueckers made a surprise appearance.
As red carpet photos rolled in from the star-studded Met Gala in New York City, pictures of Bueckers clad in a custom-made Coach suit flooded social media.
Coach, which also designed the custom suit Bueckers wore when the Wings took her No.
1 overall in the 2025 draft, is one of several brands in the 24-year-old's ever-growing sponsorship portfolio that includes Gatorade, Nike, Verizon and DoorDash.
The 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year boasts more than 7 million followers across Instagram and TikTok and was the first women's basketball star of the social media highlight generation.
From Minnesota high school sensation to UConn phenom and now WNBA standout, Bueckers has been a poster child for how athletes build their brands in the digital age.
You could also call her an NIL baby.
The groundbreaking change hit on the heels of Bueckers' historic freshman season at UConn, where she became the first freshman to be named national player of the year.
The brands quickly came knocking, further boosting the profile of the young star and her sport.
"I feel like women's sports, especially in college it's huge," Bueckers said.
"It's bigger than the men's sometimes in terms of who's in commercials and who's on national TV and who's getting talked about on social media." NIL-era athletes create leverage Clark and Reese, also a 2026 Met Gala attendee, emerged as big stars after the 2023 national championship game between Clark's Iowa and Reese's LSU.
The pair's back-and-forth interaction on the court, watched by a record number of viewers, endeared them to audiences.
Lucrative NIL deals followed, only making the stars more familiar to the public.
Clark's record-breaking season at Iowa the next year helped produce the "Caitlin Clark Effect." She reportedly helped generate $36 million in economic impact for Indianapolis after the Fever took her first overall in 2024, and the WNBA's viewership numbers skyrocketed.
Bueckers and Reese also brought more eyes to the league, now in its 30th season.
Ahead of negotiations for the WNBA's current CBA, Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier, vice president of the WNBA players association, highlighted how Bueckers, Clark and Reese were making so little from their rookie contracts despite driving massive revenue for the league.
That gap has closed under the new CBA, which increased the salary cap from $1.5 million in 2025 to $7 million in 2026.
The year-one maximum rose to $1.4 million, and the minimum increased to $300,000, with average salaries exceeding $583,000.
That feat might not have been achieved without the starpower of the league's NIL-era athletes.
"George Foreman became more famous for his grills than for his boxing, which is crazy.
People don't remember Shaq playing, they remember all the things that he's involved in now," UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma said during a recent media availability.
"And Michael Jordan's shoes are selling more now than when he played.
"But women have never really had that kind of platform and runway to do other things beyond just be excellent on the court.
To have that opportunity and then take advantage of it I just think it's groundbreaking." Trickle-down effect The WNBA's new CBA made Wings guard Azzi Fudd, the No.
1 overall pick in 2026, the highest-paid rookie in league history with a first-year salary of $500,000.
A 2021 high school graduate, Fudd has never known a world without NIL.
Her sponsorship portfolio includes Celsius, Geico, Jordan Brand and Paula's Choice.
"How much it's evolved and how much people are really investing into women and women's college athletes has been incredible to see," Fudd told The Dallas Morning News after a recent practice.
When the rookie and UConn alum entered college, NIL was completely unregulated, and now the movement has trickled down to preps athletics.
"Honestly, I'm glad I left high school before that became a thing," Fudd said.
In Texas, high school athletes who are 17 or older can ink NIL deals, but they can't receive payments until they've graduated and enrolled in college.
Top prospects have started hiring agents to help them navigate the new landscape.
In Florida, Wings coach Fernandez's home state, high school athletes can profit from NIL while still maintaining their eligibility.
"[I've seen] the endorsements, specifically [with] car dealerships, housing," Fernandez said of Florida.
"It's become a different monster." That "monster" has created uncertainty, among other issues, and has at times, subjected young athletes to burnout and exploitation.
There's no telling how NIL will evolve in the future for better or for worse but it's certainly been transformational for women's sports.
"It's unbelievable now with the CBA being done and the amount of games that are on TV and how the players are being compensated," Fernandez said.
"And it's only going to continue to grow.".