In his four-year career as Missouri’s starting quarterback, Brady Cook has thrown for 7,603 yards and 43 touchdowns. He led the Tigers to a victory in last year’s Cotton Bowl. And even after an upset loss over the weekend, his team is in a position to compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Perhaps even more impressive is Cook’s real estate portfolio, which stretches from Missouri to Georgia to Texas and includes interests in a half dozen apartment complexes, a medical building and a retirement home. He chose his assets using the business acumen he developed at the University of Missouri, where he will receive a master’s degree in business administration in December. But the financing was thanks to his right arm.

“I am not going to tell you what I make,” said Cook, whose name, image and likeness, or N.I.L., deals are estimated to be worth $1.2 million annually, according to several databases. “But I will say that I have learned more about the business of business in the last year than any other time in my life.”

It is the early days of the N.I.L. era, which allows college athletes to earn money from their athletic talents. But more than $1.7 billion is already flooding through this burgeoning economy — 80 percent of it via collectives, which funnel booster money to players.

The University of Missouri has created one of the most transparent mechanisms to make sure its student-athletes get paid and paid well, with the help of the state legislature. Most donor-funded collectives raise a majority of their dollars from boosters, but in Missouri, a state law has allowed the university to create and fund a marketing agency, called Every True Tiger, that distributes money to its athletes.

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