That Kid Flew Here From Somewhere. Don't Leave Him Exposed.

"Creates protections for international athletes earning NIL income." That's the one I keep coming back to. You know who that kid is? He's nineteen. He's from Lagos or São Paulo or Belgrade. His family scraped together what they had so he could have a shot. He gets here. He works. He earns NIL money — legally, under this bill — and then his visa status wobbles because federal immigration rules weren't written with NIL in mind. Nobody warned him. Nobody warned his coach. That's not hypothetical. That's a real kid sitting in a compliance office right now, scared, while bureaucrats figure out whether his NIL deal makes him a compensated worker under immigration law. The domestic kids have families with lawyers. The international kid has a handbook nobody updated. So I want to know exactly what "protections" means here. Is it a safe harbor from visa complications? Is it a mandate that schools provide counsel? Or is it just language — a bullet point that sounds good in a committee hearing but leaves a nineteen-year-old kid unprotected when it matters? This bill moves in the right direction. But vague protection is not protection. What specific legal mechanism does this provision create for an international athlete whose immigration status is threatened by NIL income?