University compliance and legal teams have a new challenge: the proliferation of nonprofit collectives formed by boosters and alumni to raise name, image and likeness money for a school's athletes.

Colleges aren't supposed to use NIL for recruiting, but that is effectively what's happening as the NIL dollars give an athlete another reason to pick a school, sports attorneys and others tracking the trend say.

"There's a lot that goes into a recruiting decision," said Joe Schaefer, an attorney in Lippes Mathias' Sports, Entertainment and Hospitality Team in Buffalo, New York. "The entrepreneurship scene in these collectives is offering schools another recruiting tool that they can't necessarily under NCAA rules market to their student-athletes. But it's obviously going to be part of the decision."