Why Shilo Sanders’s NIL Deals Are an Issue in His Ongoing Bankruptcy

In 2022, a court ruled that Colorado safety Shilo Sanders owed John Darjean more than $11 million in damages. Darjean, a security guard at Sanders’s Dallas-area high school, alleged that Sanders assaulted him in 2015—when the football player was just 15—badly injuring his back.

Sanders and his father, Colorado football coach Deion Sanders, have denied the allegations, accusing Darjean of instigating the incident. But the enormous judgment against him led him to declare bankruptcy last year. Sanders’s lawyers said at the time that he wanted to “get a fresh start, free from the oppressive burden of his debts,” which are almost entirely owed to Darjean.

Now, the bankruptcy case pursuing Sanders’s assets says the safety is not being fully honest about his income—assets that would go to Darjean as the primary creditor in the bankruptcy case.

On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case approved a request to hire a special counsel after reaching an “impasse” with Sanders’s legal team over his income from name, image, and likeness deals. USA Today first reported the legal move.

The request of a special counsel, which was filed Monday but approved Tuesday, is the latest attempt for the trustees to accumulate Sanders’s assets to sell off. 

Sanders has a large array of NIL deals, but the bankruptcy trustee says he hasn’t been transparent about them in the case.

“While the Debtor has provided the Trustee with certain NILs, the Trustee needs to confirm he has received all of the NILs and has full information of the use of revenue generated by the NILs,” read the request for the special counsel.

Lawyers for Darjean say Sanders has used LLCs to hide some of his NIL income, according to USA Today. Deals with Oikos and KFC—companies that Sanders has appeared in ads for—were not included in the $193,713 in 2023 income Sanders declared in the case, according to Darjean’s lawyers.

Sanders and his father did not publicly comment on the filing until earlier this summer, and they brushed it off when they finally did so. “Shilo’s good,” the elder Sanders told USA Today last month. “You know what I want you to do? I want you to do this for me: I want you to do your homework and do a whole investigation on that and then write that. I mean the whole complete investigation on what truly happened.”

Sanders, now 24, is a graduate student in his final season of eligibility.