College Athletes Score, Cutting Deals as a New Marketplace Is Born

From hurdlers to quarterbacks, students signed contracts and began to pull in some of the millions that could be made this year alone.

SOUTH MIAMI HEIGHTS, Fla. — The inevitable overture came while Rayniah Jones was watching “Dance Moms.” Just after midnight on Thursday, Jones, a star hurdler at the University of Central Florida, tapped through an iPhone app and saw something that N.C.A.A. rules had forbidden only minutes earlier: an offer of $2,500 to make three appearances at local Y.M.C.A.s. “This is a new addition to my life,” she said after sunrise as she sat in the living room of her mother’s apartment, about 40 minutes southwest of downtown Miami. “I’m just trying to test it out and see how it’s going to go and to see how my life is going to change.”