Four regulatory layers. One disclosure file per athlete. Zero room for drift.
Athletic compliance offices don't get to pick which rule applies. You're running every NIL deal through a federal layer (NCAA NIL Go disclosure and FERPA-aware data handling), a state-statute layer (CA, FL, TX, GA and ~20+ others, each different), a conference layer (SEC, B1G, ACC, Pac-12 legacy language), and a school-policy layer. When any two conflict, your job is to reconcile them — in writing, with an audit trail.
RevU is the layer that surfaces conflicts before they become Title IX office headlines or NCAA enforcement letters. We don't write your policy. We classify, flag, and log so that when an auditor asks "what did you know about this deal and when did you know it," you have a structured answer.
Institutional pricing. SSO and audit-export available. No per-athlete fees.
NCAA NIL Go disclosure tracking
NCAA Division I Bylaw 12.0 (as amended in the post-Alston interim policy and the 2025 House settlement framework) requires student-athletes to disclose NIL deals over $600 through the NCAA NIL Go reporting platform within 30 days of execution. Disclosure failures cascade into eligibility risk, which cascades into postseason eligibility risk, which cascades into revenue distribution for the whole department. Your office is the last line.
Deliverable obligations — every social post, appearance, and merchandise drop tracked against its due date in the obligations table.
Payment milestones — expected payment dates and trigger conditions logged in payment_milestones.
Confidentiality vs. disclosure conflict — clauses that prohibit disclosure to "any third party" are flagged because NIL Go counts as a third party in some brand-counsel interpretations.
Compensation aggregation — total guaranteed value across deals so you can see whether an athlete is approaching policy thresholds (school-specific) or NCAA reporting thresholds.
RevU does not file disclosures with NIL Go on behalf of athletes or institutions. That remains the athlete's/institution's submission.
RevU does not issue eligibility rulings. Those stay with your office and your conference.
RevU does not replace legal counsel for high-stakes cases (donor-fund deals, multi-year exclusivity, foreign-entity payors). For those, RevU is a leverage layer for your existing workflow.
The four-layer conflict matrix
When state statute, NCAA policy, conference policy, and school policy all speak to the same fact pattern, somebody has to reconcile. RevU surfaces the conflict; your office decides the resolution.
| Fact pattern | Federal / NCAA | State (varies) | Conference / school |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disclosure threshold | NIL Go: deals > $600 within 30 days | e.g. CA: athlete-controlled; no preemption of school policy | School-specific (often $0 reporting for transparency) |
| Logo / IP use during deal | No NCAA-mark use without license | e.g. FL: protects athlete IP; school marks reserved | School trademark office sign-off required |
| Pay-for-play prohibition | NCAA bars compensation for athletic performance per se | e.g. TX: statute is silent / permissive; carve-outs vary | Conference may have additional pay-for-play guidance |
| Conflicting endorsement | No specific NCAA rule | State statutes vary on athlete vs. school sponsor priority | School-policy "no compete with school sponsor" common |
| Foreign-payor due diligence | Patchwork — DOE/OFAC oversight for some entities | Limited statutory guidance | School policy + general counsel review |
This is a non-exhaustive illustration. NIL law is evolving; verify against current statute, conference guidance, and your institution's policy office. RevU does not give legal advice.
Regulatory anchors
The frameworks RevU references when classifying and flagging NIL contracts. Citations link out to primary sources where possible.
- NCAA Division I Manual, Bylaw 12 (Amateurism & Athletics Eligibility), including the interim NIL policy (Jul 2021) and the House settlement framework (2025). See ncaapublications.com.
- NCAA NIL Go disclosure platform — reporting threshold, 30-day window, athlete obligation.
- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99. See the U.S. Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy Office.
- State NIL statutes — see our per-state summaries: California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Alabama.
- Federal Trade Commission endorsement guidelines (16 CFR Part 255). Disclosure of material connection; "#ad" requirements apply to athlete-sponsored content.
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, where NIL access disparity raises gender-equity questions in department-facilitated deals.
- CUAD (Contract Understanding Atticus Dataset) — the 41-class clause taxonomy RevU uses as the classification backbone. The full DOI and per-class precision are in the methodology.
Reference
Compliance officers briefing athletes on specific clause types can point to the disclosure requirement, NIL Go, and morality clause entries. Evaluating us against alternatives? See RevU vs. manual review.
Questions compliance offices ask
Does RevU sign a BAA / DPA / institutional vendor agreement?
Yes for institutional contracts. Our enterprise package includes a data-processing agreement, security questionnaire support, and a vendor-onboarding artifact pack (SOC 2 status, infrastructure inventory, sub-processor list). Reach out via the enterprise contact CTA to start the conversation.
How does data flow when an athlete uploads a contract?
Athlete uploads a PDF or pastes text. Contract is encrypted at rest in our Supabase Postgres instance. Inference call to GPT-5.2 returns structured analysis (CUAD classification, severity grades, compensation extraction). The structured output is stored in thecontracts, contract_clauses, and contract_facts tables, scoped to the athlete's user record. Compliance-officer access is granted only via explicit permission grants (the contract_permissions table). No payload is used to train any third-party model.
Can RevU integrate with our existing compliance system (e.g., ARMS, Teamworks)?
Read-only export (JSON/CSV) is available now. Native integrations are on the roadmap — priority is driven by enterprise-tier customer demand. Let us know which platform you'd want first.
What if an analysis is wrong? Who's liable?
RevU is a contract-analysis tool, not a law firm. Output is non-binding analysis, not a legal opinion. Liability for the compliance determination remains with the institution and its counsel. Our enterprise terms specify the bounded warranty and limitation of liability — happy to walk your general counsel through them.
Do you support SSO and role-based access for compliance staff?
SSO (SAML / OIDC) is available in enterprise. Role-based access is built in: the users table supports compliance_officer as a first-class role with scoped read across an organization. Audit logging tracks who viewed which contract and when.
FERPA-aware data handling
Whether a given NIL contract is a FERPA "education record" is an institution-specific policy call. RevU's handling controls are designed to be compatible with FERPA-covered data: encryption at rest and in transit, per-organization access scoping, no third-party model training on customer payloads, full audit trail in audit_events, and admin-initiated deletion. We provide the controls; your general counsel makes the policy determination.