This project examines how new Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities are reshaping the moral and psychological lives of college athletes. With the ability to earn money and build personal brands, athletes now navigate pressures that extend beyond competition and teamwork. These opportunities can strengthen traits like courage and grit, but they may also challenge humility, empathy, and patience as athletes balance personal ambition, public attention, and social relationships.
The project asks three key questions: How do financial incentives and moral values interact in shaping behavior? How do daily routines and seasonal demands support or challenge virtue development? And what personal and environmental factors help athletes thrive in this new landscape?
To answer these questions, we will follow roughly 250 student-athletes over two years, combining surveys of stable traits with detailed daily accounts of their experiences during and outside the competitive season. By the end of the project, we will deliver 2–4 manuscripts submitted for peer review, presentations at academic conferences, and white papers summarizing our findings. We will also foster interdisciplinary dialogue across psychology, sociology, philosophy, and theology, training graduate and undergraduate students in this research area and visiting other collegiate athletic programs to expand collaboration.
This work matters because it provides the first comprehensive picture of how market pressures affect moral and psychological growth in college sports. Coaches, athletic departments, and student-athletes will gain insights to support character development while navigating financial and social pressures, and the broader research community will benefit from new empirical evidence and collaborative approaches to understanding virtue in contemporary athletics.
