Deion Sanders adopted an aggressive ‘all-in’ mentality as he planned Colorado’s comeback for the 2026 season. The best way he thought to move forward was to bring discipline to the clubhouse. And to do that, he decided to impose fines on players. Anywhere from $500 for being late to practice, $2500 for missing it, and players could even be forced to cough up $5000 for public misconduct. However, his idea of being ‘all-in’ is not sitting well with the rest in the CFB landscape, especially lawyers.

These rule violation fines have now brought up the debate of how NILs truly operate in college football and how players stand to be treated by their respective programs. And not everyone is pleased.

“This exposes the fiction of #NIL ‘license agreements,’” reputed sports lawyer Darren Heitner shared on X. “They’re employment contracts disguised to avoid labor protections, workers’ comp, and union rights. If players are employees in all but name (fined for tardiness, required to attend, and subject to performance obligations), they deserve employee protections. Can’t have it both ways. Either these are real licensing deals (and you can’t fine someone for being late to practice) or admit it’s compensated labor.”

Those disciplinary fines are pretty steep for a program whose 2026 class has an average NIL valuation of only $24,000. Deion Sanders’ crackdown on players’ earnings has once again fired up the debate of college football athletes and their employment status. Despite the NIL’s influence becoming more pronounced by the day, this particular aspect of athletes remains the biggest grey area in college football.

College football now mirrors the NFL in almost every way from a financial perspective. But the one major difference in college football is that, unlike the pro league, athletes don’t have employee rights. Deion Sanders’ decision to levy a financial punishment on his players attacks this major loophole.

NIL deals also have little to do with game performance, allowing even non-contributing players to earn good money. But since they are not classed as employees, they are not subject to labor laws. For example, college football can avoid Title IX lawsuits – complaints of sex-based discrimination by a federally-funded body, because players are not classed as employees. This is the crux of Heitner’s comment on Sanders’ controversial policy.

The NCAA and P4 conferences backed the SCORE Act, which unfortunately fell apart in Congress during voting. It would have been a big win for the two parties, because it grants protection against antitrust violation lawsuits. It also makes room for entities to bypass state NIL laws. Most importantly, it formally discards the idea of college athletes being employees. This would allow programs to have somewhat of a free rein on them as long as they stayed with the team. A scenario similar to this is unfolding in Colorado.

Players have tried to fight this control in the past, but alas, have been hit with roadblocks. The Dartmouth men’s college basketball program could have set off a major movement, as its right to unionize was granted by the court with regard to the NLRA (National Labor Regulation Act), thereby granting them employee status. But the lawsuit was pulled back by the program later. USC football and basketball athletes were also pursuing a lawsuit to fight for employment status.

Deion Sanders, the highest-paid employee of the state of Colorado, plans to treat the Buffaloes with an NFL blueprint. He remains one of the biggest critics of the NIL era since his initial days as a college football head coach. When he was at Jackson State, he made a very ironic claim in his complaints about the dominance of NIL in college football.

“When you start paying athletes like they’re professionals, you get athletes acting like they’re professionals,” he shared on X in 2022.

Sanders made that comment with regard to how high the NIL demands tend to go among college football players. In this year’s transfer portal, elite non-quarterback players were reportedly looking at deals in the $4 million range. Today, players in college are making more than rookies in the NFL. But, at the same time, Colorado and P4 programs get to bypass the red tape around labor laws when it comes to financially supporting players. The ratification of the SCORE Act would be a major help for Sanders, too.

However, CU football will now be taking a share of players’ hard-earned money to go ahead with that plan. If athletes had been awarded employment status, this could have been easily looked at as a rights violation. Though CU might argue that this is just Deion Sanders forcing his team to become serious about playing for Colorado, this move has reached avenues far from it.

Deion Sanders clearly has a lot to work on for the 2026 season, considering the massive exodus of players and the troubling 3-9 finish in the 2025 season. But will such strict measures really turn out to be fruitful for the program’s image?