Begnals RB Trayveon Williams to Co-Teach NIL Law Course at Texas A&M

FORT WORTH, Texas (KBTX) — At the end of the upcoming NFL season, Bengals running back and former Texas A&M running back Trayveon Williams will trade his cleats for the classroom.

Having already proven himself in an Aggie jersey and now in the pros, Williams will further flesh out his resume, this time under a new job title: Professor.

Williams will work as an adjunct professor and co-teach an Athlete Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) defense course with sports attorney and business consultant Alex Sinatra. The partnership was first offered as a joke in a tweet and has since come to fruition.

Sinatra pitched the idea for the course to several universities but never considered having an athlete co-teach with her, now she thinks it will be vital.

“It’s so invaluable to have a former varsity athlete, a current pro athlete, come in and share the experience on the player side,” Sinatra said. “He’s going to explain what he’s looking for in an athlete advocate, what issues he’s had with previous advocates, if any, what it’s like to be an athlete in college, what it’s like to be an athlete. It’s being a professional athlete and the skills that he looks at because it’s in the people that he centers himself.

Even though Williams left A&M in 2019 before the NIL legislation took effect, on Sinatra’s “Your Potential for Everything” podcastWilliams explained why classes like this are important.

“…with the direction that NIL is going, and obviously now that athletes can capitalize on their name and image and likeness…it has to be someone who represents them, it has to be someone who understands the the ins and outs when it comes to building contracts and doing all the fine detail…”

The tandem course will cover a variety of topics, but there is one key takeaway that Sinatra hopes his students will learn.

“Athletes are first and foremost human. To be a good advocate, you have empathy and compassion for the people you represent,” Sinatra said. “Specifically for class in the sports context, we really want to elevate the sports industry as a whole and revolutionize it so that athletes are at the center of it, that the rules and regulations in professional sports and universities are human and people-oriented, rather than money-oriented.

Sinatra and Williams’ course will begin in the spring of 2023 at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth.

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