John Cougar Mellencamp thumps through the Whitney Auditorium at the Marsal Family School of Education as 79 students file in, met by members of the teaching team, school administrators and U-M’s men’s lacrosse head coach John Paul — all dressed in red and white to represent Indiana University.
They’ve gathered for “Hoosiers on the Brink,” a high-energy simulation designed by lecturer Greg Dooley as part of his class “NIL: Education and Equity in Name, Image, and Likeness.”
Dooley’s class tackles the rapidly changing landscape of compensation for college athletes. In this simulation, each of the 16 student groups represented major stakeholders in college athletics and debated how to rescue IU from a fictional financial crisis.
“I can’t emphasize enough how surprised I was at how much students got into it,” said graduate student instructor Maddie Denny, a second-year master’s student in higher education. “They were fully in character standing for what this individual role believed in — which for some of them isn’t what they individually believed.”
NIL stands for Name, Image, and Likeness and refers to the rights that allow college athletes to profit from their personal brands through sponsorships and endorsements. After the 2021 NCAA policy shift and the 2025 House v. NCAA ruling, schools can now share athletic department revenue directly with athletes for the first time in college sports history.
Keeping pace with that change is Dooley’s biggest challenge.
“What I taught last semester is a completely different focus from what I’m teaching this semester,” Dooley said. “In 2023 we were talking about conceptually if the schools could actually share the revenue and should they? Now they can.”
While other universities offer courses on the subject, Dooley’s class is unique in that it’s housed in the School of Education, which opens it up for a wider breadth of content. At the University of Texas, the course is offered through the communications school, and Duke University’s NIL class is housed in the business school.
“Being in the School of Education gives me the freedom to view this as an academic approach, not necessarily a particular discipline, which is what makes my class unlike any other that’s offered anywhere,” Dooley said.
Danielle Dimcheff, director of marketing and communications at Marsal, said the NIL class fits into the School of Education, because its aim is to extend beyond preparing future K-12 teachers.
“We believe education touches everything, whether you’re in a company and you’re learning new skills, or you’re a manager, in government, or nonprofit organizations, we really want to find ways where we can help people understand the enormous breadth of education,” Dimcheff said.
The idea for the course came from several conversations Dooley had with Marsal staff, including Dean Elizabeth Moje.
“She approached me with the idea of a broad-based class around all the challenges around the current state of college athletics and sports including equity and following the money and how that’s impacting and shaping college athletics,” Dooley said.
Initially skeptical that there would be enough content for a full semester, Dooley piloted the course with six students in spring 2023.
“At the conclusion of that term, I thought, we really have something here,” he said. “It’s really taken off from there.”
A former IT executive with an MBA from Indiana University, Dooley joined U-M as a lecturer in 2022. He now teaches three popular courses — “History of College Athletics,” “Coaching and Leadership” and “NIL: Education and Equity in Name, Image, and Likeness” — which together form the Coaching and Leadership minor within the Marsal School.
Among the most debated topics is how NIL intersects with Title IX — the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding.
“Title IX is incredibly important; it’s way more important than sports,” Dooley said. “Are we losing sight of that as all this money gets thrown around — most of it toward football?”
Although he’s a big fan, Dooley encourages students to look beyond football.
“A lot of students come in really focused on football and men’s basketball,” Denny said. “Dooley always pushes them to think about non-revenue sports, and especially about women’s sports.”
About one-third of the 79 students in this fall’s class are athletes. Many come from outside the Marsal School — including junior James Oosterhouse, a robotics engineering major who has taken one of Dooley’s classes every year and served as his intern during the 2024-25 school year.
“His classes have really impacted me as a person,” Oosterhouse said. “I think I’m able to approach my other classes much more effectively,”
Dooley credits his graduate instructors with bringing educational expertise to the course. “My graduate instructors amazingly have shaped and made this class better — not because they know this topic, but because they know how to teach,” he said.
For first-year GSI Joy Hewitt-Murdolo, that collaboration keeps the class dynamic. “Dooley is so fun to learn from,” she said. “It’s cool that he’s not a typical Ph.D. professor — he does it because he loves it.”
The classes Dooley teaches are known for having prominent guest lecturers, including President Domenico Grasso, women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico, and this semester, an important member of U-M’s football team.
“An exciting thing we had this semester was to have Justice Haynes, the star running back for the football team. He’s a perfect case study,” Dooley said.
For Denny, bringing in larger-than-life figures helps the class see athletes as fellow students.
“It’s a fun thing when this football star is still also just a student and you have a chance to realize that,” Denny said, whose studies focus on supporting student athletes.
With its attention-grabbing headlines, students often come into the course with strong emotions on NIL and equity — making for lively debate, encouraged by Dooley.
“Some have strong opinions,” Dooley said. “I’d like students to come up with their own viewpoints, even if they’re not popular.”
Outside the classroom, Dooley continues the conversation online, sharing class highlights and guest visits on LinkedIn and Instagram.
“I care deeply about what I do every day,” he said. “I want students to know about my classes, be motivated, and check one out.”
