Why Mizzou Tigers’ international athletes face NIL rules other athletes don’t

Kobi Walker is far from your average D1 runner.

Unless starting a business at 14 years old, before she even picked up competitive running, amassing 80,000 followers on TikTok and seamlessly integrating with the team after moving across the world to compete is the new normal.

That level of recognition and accomplishment would seemingly make Walker a perfect candidate for brand partnerships, third-party NIL deals and more, especially at a university, Mizzou, that has been hunting those opportunities for some time.

But that's the one thing she can't get a head start on.

Almost all athletes coming from overseas to the U.S. to pursue collegiate athletics hold an F-1 visa, which implements its own set of restrictions on what holders can make, where they can make it, and more. That changes the formula for reaping gains from NIL deals.

Walker, a member of Mizzou's cross-country team, hails from Brisbane, Australia, where she played sports like netball, oztag (non-tackling rugby) and touch football, another rugby variation, before finding running during the COVID-19 lockdown. She immediately won her high school's in-house cross country race and subsequently joined the team.

"The rest is history," Walker said. "I'm now living 14,000 kilometers away from my family."

Picking things up quickly is nothing new for Walker. In her first-ever collegiate cross country meet, she finished third at the Mizzou Opener at Gans Creek. Now, she is fighting with her teammates to earn the Tigers a trip to the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2016.

Off the course, her success has been equally impressive. She started Foodie Spread, a grazing table business, at 14, and then Kobi's Kitchen, where she wrote an online cookbook and prepped traditional Australian seasonings with healthier ingredients a year later.

To document running both businesses at such a young age, she started posting on TikTok under @mekobiwalker. Coming over to the States has only helped her viewership.

"I think it grew over 150% since I moved from Australia to America because people find it so fascinating what life as a D1 athlete is like," Walker said.

Her short-form videos are peppy and energetic, and offer the perspective of an entrepreneur, D-1 athlete and international traveler that many are interested in. One of her more recent TikTok hits was sharing how SEC athletes rack up points by competing in events to spend on certain gifts, which include air fryers, speakers, TVs and more. The video racked up almost 100,000 views. Walker prides herself on providing authentic content about her story.

"I think what my audience really loves is that what you see is what you get," Walker said.

That social media success even led to a spot on the "Famous Birthdays" website. There, she ranks as the second-most popular Kobi in the world, behind only Kobi Brown who rose to prominence through his TikTok posts about space exploration.

Mizzou's NIL journey

In July 2021, the NCAA first allowed athletes to take deals that compensated them in exchange for use of their Name, Image and Likeness. Since that point, college sports has boomed into an industry where athletes will see almost $2 billion in NIL products and services in 2025, according to Opendorse's "NIL at Four" 2024-2025 annual report.

Athletes are also getting a chunk of change directly from schools after the House v. NCAA settlement introduced a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap.

Mizzou has consistently branded itself as a university on the cutting edge of NIL opportunities.

The header of the NIL collective Every True Tiger's website reads: "NIL Just Changed. Mizzou Was Ready," and continues to explain how it has been proactive in creating those types of opportunities for athletes. Documents uncovered by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed that Mizzou sent upwards of $31 million to Every True Tiger from July 2024 through June 2025, demonstrating the unprecedented level of financial support student-athletes are now receiving across a variety of sports.

"(NIL) has been a blessing to me, and I've been able to get a jump start on the rest of my life, whether football works out for me or not," Tigers offensive lineman Cayden Green said at Tiger Talk, a weekly radio show about MU athletics.

It hasn't just been football players who have been able to capitalize. On average, D1 athletes received $10,644 in NIL money, according to Opendorse. And even though those invoices to Every True Tiger did reveal Mizzou spent the majority of funds on football and men's basketball, eight sports total received at least $97,000 in 2024, with track and field receiving $140,000.

In this new age of college sports, athletes across the spectrum are cashing in through deals related to their NIL brands and school revenue shares.

All of them, that is, except for athletes from overseas like Walker. International athletes make up over 12% of Division 1 participants, and in certain sports like tennis, over 60%.

Many of them have outstanding resumes that could be leveraged to cash in the same way. But federal rules currently bar them from taking advantage.

"It is really a missed opportunity for us," Walker said.

Athletes from abroad face hurdles

Joshua Wildes, an immigration attorney at New York-based law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., said that immigration law has lagged behind NCAA regulations in terms of opening up opportunities for those student-athletes.

"International students and international student-athletes are still bound by visa rules that were written in a pre-NIL world. So they're dealing with a completely different ballgame," Wildes said.

Current immigration law, Wildes said, mostly prohibits athletes from earning any kind of NIL or revenue-sharing income while their proverbial boots are on American soil.

One way some athletes and schools have tried to get around that is through what's known as passive income, earned without the athlete doing anything in exchange. This could look like royalty payments from merchandise sales. Active income, on the other hand, is any cash earned through direct work.

Mizzou volleyball senior outside hitter Janet DeMarrais, a domestic athlete, represents both forms of income. On her Instagram account, she partnered with Olipop before the season and is directly involved in the advertisement, which would be considered active income. She also makes passive income from branded merchandise sales on her NIL Store, which features numerous Tiger athletes.

Wildes said international athletes should be extremely careful pursuing such opportunities, and talk with an attorney before making any decisions.

"The immigration authorities define employment very broadly," Wildes said. "Sometimes, it doesn't matter if it's active or passive, and sometimes even if you're being paid or not."

And it's made clear at Mizzou: When searching that same NIL Store, there are no names of international athletes listed.

So, what are international athletes allowed to do? They are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week in on-campus positions like dining halls or libraries. The law even specifies that these positions must "provide direct student services" (9)(i), so it's not as if athletes could just run NIL promotions from a cushy athletic building office.

All this is to say that if international athletes need to make some extra cash, they are forced into taking positions that likely pay close to minimum wage while their teammates are raking in NIL dough, all while playing the same sports and working just as hard.

"I would be lying if I said it wasn't frustrating," Walker said. "I'd love to see the landscape change."

There have been efforts to do just that.

In April 2024, representatives from Nebraska and North Carolina introduced a federal bill called the Name, Image, and Likeness for International Collegiate Athletes Act, which would have altered laws surrounding F-1 visas to allow those athletes to capitalize on NIL. It didn't pass through a House committee.

Athletes have also tried applying for other visa types, including P-1As and O-1s, although the success rate has been low. Both visas would allow athletes to more readily sign NIL deals.

One of them is former LSU and current Arizona State women's basketball player Last-Tear Poa. In late October 2024, she sued U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for denying her request for a P-1, which are granted to internationally-recognized athletes in well-known leagues. Just over a month ago in September, a Louisiana court dismissed USCIS's attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, meaning the case will continue for the foreseeable future.

To compensate for the current NIL gap, programs at Mizzou are helping athletes do what Walker has already done - take advantage of your personal brand to eventually make money while back home, or even after graduation.

While being at the top of your sport helps, those working to do so say connecting on a personal level with viewers helps build that brand even further. That's why former Mizzou volleyball star Colleen Finney, who now helps athletes develop those brands, starts with one question.

What's your story?

Starting with socials

Finney now works as an NIL coordinator for Every True Tiger, where she helps Mizzou athletes build their brands both for personal development, and, when applicable, third-party NIL deals. She's working to find opportunities for international athletes as well.

Finney and Every True Tiger's X account say the athlete's story is the most important selling point in their brand, at times even ahead of on-field performance. When Finney meets with an athlete interested in expanding their social brand, she splits them off into one of two buckets: Those who have a good idea of their off-the-field story, and ones who don't.

"Your sport is one thing, your hobbies are another," Finney said. "And then, what do you want to do in the future? These are questions that I need them to start thinking about as it relates to their future. Because all of this is related to personal branding and social media and then ultimately NIL."

Every True Tiger also says social media is one of the best ways to parlay that story into a paycheck.

In 2025, the value of a personal brand is correlated with analytics on social media platforms. That's how businesses decide who to partner with, due to both the raw number of engagements the creator gets and the specific demographics of those clicks. Data shows that 31% of all commercial NIL money comes from an athlete's social presence, along with 45% of all brand-led deals.

Part of Finney's job is getting athletes to expand their belief systems about what makes them notable on social media.

"A lot of (athletes), unfortunately, have grown up in a world where they only think that they're good at their sport, and that's all that their story is," Finney said.

Athletes do have a significant advantage in the social media game. According to Opendorse, athletes draw almost three times as much engagement as traditional influencers. That's digital gold for companies, and even though international athletes can't always take advantage while they're actively on a U.S. collegiate roster, the value of the brand they build can last long after they depart.

That's part of the reason Mizzou started a program in January 2024 pairing athletes with students studying public relations in an effort to bolster the athletes' social media presence. Students in both professor Jonathan Stemmle's Public Relations class as well as those in Mizzou's PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) chapter are involved with the program, and they benefit as well from the real-world experience of building real brands.

Olivia McMurry is one such student. Through Stemmle's class, she's working with Valentina Barrios, a senior javelin thrower from Barranquilla, Colombia.

Barrios' onfield narrative was displayed front and center on June 12, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon, where she won the women's javelin national championship by launching the spear 203 feet, 5 inches.

McMurry said that while those highlight performances can be the base of a brand, a more personal off-the-field story is how socials can flower.

"If you don't feel like you can connect to them on some type of personal level, it's hard to really love who they are and buy into who they are," McMurry said. "Because you're not going to relate that they won an NCAA event."

Barrios, McMurry said, is very family-oriented, and has made competing against the best in the world her sole purpose since coming to Mizzou. Getting to see her in more depth is the first step in helping Barrios upgrade her brand.

"We're looking at, like, changing the social media plan to more like, 'Who are you?' " McMurry said. "Like, 'How can other people know you and connect to you besides this really good javelin thrower?' "

McMurry wants to see Barrios post more about her life events and family values beyond what's happening in the field, because many of her current posts are just collaborations with other pages that tag her and highlight her athletic achievements.

Educating international athletes on restrictions surrounding NIL is also a challenge, because many don't even have monetizing their brand on their radar.

She's come here to have better competition," McMurry said. "Unlike a lot of US athletes who go to college where they're going to get the most money."

That sentiment is echoed by Walker.

"We're quite lucky to have a really cool team here at Mizzou that I can always bounce ideas with," Walker said. "But, as of yet, I haven't really done any of that. My main focus for now is, you know, being the best athlete that I can be."

As rules around NIL continue to change in the NCAA, Mizzou continues to provide resources for athletes to take advantage. If immigration law eventually does allow more flexibility for international athletes, Every True Tiger has a system already in place. In the meantime, athletes like Walker should continue being the most authentic versions of themselves on social media, and the best version possible on the field.

That way, when the rules finally catch up or they graduate, they'll have both the brand power and personalized audience ready to go.

Unlike most athletes, Walker's off-the-course story is pretty well documented. She'll have a chance to author another chapter on it at 10:30 Friday in Stillwater, Oklahoma at the NCAA Midwest Championship.

Helping bring the Tigers back to the national championships would be big for business.

Copyright 2025 Columbia Missourian

This story was originally published November 14, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Why Mizzou Tigers’ international athletes face NIL rules other athletes don’t."