The reported cease-and-desist dispute between Jayden Daniels and LSU offers a timely lesson in the limits—and real leverage—of name, image, and likeness rights.
Reports say that Daniels sent LSU a cease-and-desist letter objecting to the school’s continued use of his NIL after LSU assigned No. 5, the number Daniels wore during his Heisman-winning season, to another player. The available reporting describes a pre-suit letter rather than a public lawsuit, and the full letter does not appear to have been publicly released. That distinction matters: the public discussion has tended to collapse two separate questions into one.
The first is whether LSU may continue to make commercial use of Jayden Daniels’s identifiable NIL. The second is whether Daniels can prevent LSU from reissuing No. 5. Those are not the same legal claim—and the second is substantially more difficult on the reported facts.
NIL protects identity, not every symbol associated with an athlete
NIL is often used as shorthand for an athlete’s commercial identity: name, photograph, voice, signature, likeness, social-media persona, and other features that identify the athlete to consumers. The NCAA’s modern NIL framework recognizes that student-athletes may participate in legitimate commercial opportunities, while LSU’s NIL guidance separately requires written permission to use LSU’s own marks, logos, copyrights, or facilities. In other words, athlete rights and school IP rights can coexist in the same campaign.
A player’s jersey number may help identify that player, but it is not automatically the player’s property. A number becomes legally significant when it functions with other facts as part of a recognizable commercial identity—or when it has been protected through a specific contract, trademark registration, licensing arrangement, or brand campaign.
That is why the better question is not, “Who owns No. 5?” It is: What is LSU using, in what commercial context, and what rights did the parties allocate by contract?
The number alone is unlikely to decide the dispute
Athletic numbers can be protected as trademarks in the right circumstances, but trademark protection does not arise merely because a number is famous or emotionally connected to a player. The owner must establish protectable rights in a mark and, generally, a likelihood that consumers will be confused about source, sponsorship, affiliation, or approval.
The sports-world dispute in PBTM LLC v. Football Northwest, LLC illustrates the point. That litigation involved competing claims related to “12” branding connected to Seahawks fandom. The court’s analysis focused on actual trademark rights, contractual allocations, and likelihood of consumer confusion—not a generalized right to control a number. PBTM LLC v. Football Nw., LLC, No. C19-2081-RSL (W.D. Wash. Mar. 7, 2022).
Applied here, LSU’s assignment of No. 5 to a current player, without more, is unlikely by itself to establish that LSU is commercially exploiting Daniels’s identity or misleading consumers into believing Daniels endorsed the new player. Reissuing a uniform number is ordinarily part of a team’s management of its own roster, uniforms, and traditions.
That conclusion could change if the surrounding presentation does the identifying work. For example, a campaign that pairs No. 5 with Daniels’s name, image, Heisman-era highlights, signature phrases, or an explicit suggestion that he approved the promotion presents a different analysis from placing No. 5 on a current athlete’s jersey.
The potentially stronger issue: continued commercial use of Daniels’s NIL
The reported letter’s legal force may lie less in the number itself and more in the allegation that LSU continues to use Daniels’s NIL after the relevant authorization ended. That claim would be fact-specific. Critical documents would include:
any NIL, media, merchandising, licensing, or appearance agreement involving Daniels, LSU, its athletic department, a conference, a collective, or a licensing agent;
the agreement’s scope, duration, termination rights, and post-term use provisions;
releases governing game footage, photography, archival content, social media, and merchandise;
the particular advertisements, products, videos, or promotions challenged; and
evidence of whether the use implies Daniels’s current endorsement or affiliation.
Contract often does more work than headline-level NIL terminology. If an agreement granted LSU a perpetual or continuing right to use certain historical images and footage, a demand to stop that use may be limited by the agreement’s language. If the authorization was narrow, expired, or excluded commercial merchandising, Daniels’s position becomes stronger.
The broader NIL litigation history shows why identifiability matters. In the college-football video-game litigation, the Ninth Circuit held that a right-of-publicity claim could proceed where a game allegedly recreated a former player with a matching combination of physical characteristics, playing attributes, team context, and jersey number—even though names were omitted. In re NCAA Student-Athlete Name & Likeness Licensing Litigation v. Electronic Arts Inc., 724 F.3d 1268 (9th Cir. 2013). The legal takeaway is not that any jersey number belongs to an athlete; it is that a sufficiently realistic combination of details can identify an athlete for commercial purposes.
Louisiana adds an important wrinkle
Because LSU is located in Louisiana, state-law publicity claims deserve particular attention. Louisiana does recognize privacy interests that can include appropriation of a living person’s name or likeness, but its appellate courts have been cautious about creating a broad, freestanding right of publicity without legislative direction.
In Frigon v. Universal Pictures, Inc., the Louisiana First Circuit declined to recognize the asserted post-mortem right-of-publicity claim as a new cause of action absent legislative action. Frigon v. Universal Pictures, Inc., 255 So. 3d 591 (La. App. 1 Cir. 2018). That case did not involve a living athlete’s current NIL dispute, and it does not answer Daniels’s potential claims. But it does underscore why an athlete in Louisiana should not assume that a broad “right of publicity” label resolves the issue. Contract, trademark, false-endorsement theory, privacy/appropriation principles, and the governing law clause may be decisive.
Schools and athletes should separate the rights at the outset
This dispute is a practical drafting lesson for athletic departments, collectives, licensees, and athletes. Their agreements should state, in plain terms:
whether the school may use the athlete’s name, image, likeness, jersey number, signature, or social-media content;
whether the use is limited to recruiting, news, archival content, fundraising, ticketing, merchandising, or third-party licensing;
whether the school may use historical content after the athlete leaves;
whether a uniform number can be promoted as associated with the athlete after departure;
whether the athlete has approval or notice rights for commercial campaigns; and
who owns, controls, and enforces any trademarks developed around the athlete’s personal brand.
The school must also protect its side of the line. LSU’s published NIL guidance states that use of LSU trademarks, logos, copyrights, or facilities requires written permission. A player can commercialize personal identity rights without obtaining ownership of the institution’s uniforms, marks, or brand assets.
The bottom line
Jayden Daniels may have legitimate concerns if LSU is using his identifiable NIL in new commercial promotions outside the scope of any release or license. But the proposition that No. 5, standing alone, is legally “his NIL” is too broad.
A number can be part of a commercially recognizable identity. It can be protected in a tailored trademark or contract arrangement. And it can contribute to an actionable use when combined with enough identifying features to invoke a particular athlete. But a jersey number is not automatically an athlete-owned asset simply because fans connect it to that athlete.
For LSU, Daniels, and other college sports stakeholders, the practical issue is not sentimental ownership of a number. It is careful allocation of identity rights, institutional IP, commercial permissions, and post-term use before the athlete becomes a national brand.
This article addresses reported facts and general legal principles, not legal advice. The reported cease-and-desist letter has not been publicly filed as a lawsuit, and the full agreement history between Daniels and LSU is not public.