The ‘Real Ticket’: Reimagining Social Mobility for Black Athletes in the Era of NIL

• In Event: Data, Play, and Power: Sports as Culturally Sustaining Learning Sites

Abstract

College athletics offers Black athletes visible pathways to mobility while embedding them in systems that commodify their bodies and devalue their intellectual development. This presentation uses Critical Race Theory to trace how race and neoliberal logics especially under NIL and expanded transfer mobility shape which athletes gain visibility, circulate, and are supported, often privileging market value over holistic growth (Allison et al., 2018). Institutional practices reproduce racialized hierarchies, enforcing an athlete/academic binary that fractures identity and limits long-term opportunity even as athletes generate revenue and public spectacle.
The analysis situates these dynamics historically and structurally, showing how neoliberal emphasis on competition and individual “choice” distorts educational purpose and leaves Black athletes navigating systems designed without their full inclusion (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011). Contemporary policy shifts amplify movement and monetization but produce uneven outcomes, exposing many athletes to instability without concurrent investment in intellectual capital. Insider perspectives, notably from practitioner Reggie Calhoun Jr., surface gaps in financial literacy and the media’s role in reinforcing simplistic racial and class stereotypes. His work illustrates how Black athletes and families attempt to reclaim economic agency through budgeting, investment education, and reframing their narratives amid constraining perceptions (Dubrow & Adams, 2012).
The presentation also highlights the overlooked STEM identity potential of Black student-athletes. Their daily engagement with biomechanics, recovery, and performance data constitutes lived scientific practice that remains invisible due to scheduling conflicts, narrow advising, and lack of culturally affirming representation (Grasgreen, 2012; Smith & Willingham, 2015). Recommended interventions include flexible STEM coursework (e.g., hybrid or remote labs), culturally responsive advising that incorporates growth mindset and warm demander strategies, and broadened major exploration to move advisors from gatekeepers to enablers of integrated development (Drazan, 2010).
A critical lens is applied to gendered inequities, particularly the compounded marginalization of Black women athletes, and to media influence that shapes public perception and economic opportunity unevenly (Simien et al., 2019). The “real ticket” is reframed not as a singular athletic payday but as sustained intellectual capital, supported mobility, and identity coherence that resists commodification.
Attendees will gain a layered understanding of how racialized neoliberal structures distort mobility narratives, grounded insights from practitioner experience on economic and narrative agency, and actionable policy and advising strategies to reimagine athlete development. The goal is to center Black athletes as whole persons whose social mobility depends on integrated support across sport, education, and identity.

Author

• Lien Amin, University of Colorado - Boulder