Jeremy Warner, writing for Illini Inquirer, has the story about the brand new NIL collective for Illinois Athletics, ICON.

ICON Collective is Illinois athletics' reaction to the NCAA’s guidance in October that schools cannot directly engage in negotiations for collectives or student-athletes, something the Illini athletics program had been doing during the previous months. In this ever-changing world of NIL — and ever-changing NCAA oversight of NIL — this meant the Illini needed to pivot and rely solely on collectives to raise and disperse NIL funds to student-athletes with the athletics department focusing on NIL education and guidance.

This is great. We need more ways for everyone to help attract the best student-athletes to the Illinois campus.