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Jared McCain and the Future of Contract Workflows
What a trending athlete teaches teams about modern agreements
5/23/20268 min read
What a trending athlete teaches teams about modern agreements
What a trending athlete teaches teams about modern agreements.
Last updated: May 23, 2026
Jared McCain's rapid rise illustrates how modern contracts must move faster than traditional legal processes. NIL deals, endorsements, and employment agreements demand compliant e-signatures, clear approvals, and audit-ready records. Teams that standardize templates, automate approvals, and track obligations reduce risk and capture value faster. Platforms like ZiaSign show how enterprise-grade CLM principles apply well beyond sports.
Jared McCain is trending because his athletic performance and public profile have accelerated his commercial opportunities, putting contracts at the center of the conversation. For contract operations and legal teams, this is a real-world example of how speed, compliance, and clarity intersect.
Trending athlete contracts: In the era of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), athletes like McCain can sign multiple endorsement, licensing, and appearance agreements in short timeframes. According to the NCAA, NIL activities are governed by a patchwork of state laws and institutional policies, increasing legal complexity (NCAA NIL guidance).
From a contract workflow perspective, these deals mirror enterprise realities:
Key insight: When deal velocity increases, manual contract processes break down first.
This is where Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) principles apply. World Commerce & Contracting consistently reports that inefficient contracting can erode up to 9 percent of annual revenue through missed obligations and delays (WorldCC). Whether managing athlete endorsements or SaaS sales agreements, the fundamentals are the same.
Modern platforms like ZiaSign support these scenarios with AI-powered drafting, template version control, and legally binding e-signatures, helping teams move from negotiation to execution without sacrificing governance. Even for early-stage or individual agreements, tools such as signing PDFs online remove friction while maintaining legal validity.
NIL and endorsement contracts show how fast-moving agreements expose weaknesses in traditional workflows. Enterprise teams face similar pressures during high-volume sales cycles, seasonal hiring, or procurement surges.
NIL contract structure: These agreements often include scope of use, exclusivity, morality clauses, payment milestones, and termination rights. Each clause introduces risk if misunderstood or inconsistently applied.
A practical framework enterprises can borrow:
ZiaSign addresses this with AI clause suggestions and risk scoring, helping teams identify non-standard language before it becomes a liability. Its visual drag-and-drop workflow builder mirrors how approvals should work in practice, not how org charts look on paper.
For supporting documents, contract teams often need to reformat or combine files quickly. Free tools like merge PDF and edit PDF streamline prep work without introducing shadow IT.
Definition: Obligation management is the process of tracking and enforcing contractual commitments after signing.
Gartner highlights obligation management as a key maturity indicator in CLM adoption (Gartner). The lesson from NIL is clear: execution is only the midpoint of the contract lifecycle.
Legally binding e-signatures are the foundation of fast contract execution, whether for an athlete endorsement or an enterprise MSA. Under the ESIGN Act and UETA, electronic signatures carry the same legal weight as wet ink in the US (ESIGN Act). In the EU, eIDAS provides a similar framework (eIDAS regulation).
What makes an e-signature defensible:
ZiaSign delivers this with audit trails including timestamps, IP addresses, and device fingerprints, which is critical if a deal is ever challenged. This matters in high-profile agreements where reputational and financial stakes are high.
Comparison of signature approaches:
| Method | Speed | Compliance | Auditability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wet ink | Slow | High | Manual |
| Email approval | Medium | Low | Weak |
| E-signature | Fast | High | Strong |
Exactly one competitor perspective: Compared to legacy tools, ZiaSign emphasizes simplicity and breadth. While DocuSign is widely known, teams evaluating flexibility and cost often review alternatives. See our DocuSign vs ZiaSign comparison for a factual breakdown of features, pricing approach, and workflow customization.
For teams onboarding quickly, ZiaSign also integrates with tools like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, reducing friction at the moment of signature.
High-pressure deals reveal whether approval workflows are designed for reality or theory. Jared McCain style endorsement deals may need sign-off from agents, legal counsel, and brands, often within days.
Workflow design principle: Approvals should follow risk, not hierarchy.
A scalable workflow model:
ZiaSign's drag-and-drop workflow builder allows teams to encode this logic visually, without custom development. This mirrors best practices recommended by Forrester in digital process automation research (Forrester).
Supporting documents often need rapid conversion for reviewers. Tools like PDF to Word or PDF to Excel help stakeholders comment in familiar formats.
Key insight: Bottlenecks usually occur before signing, not after.
By instrumenting workflows with timestamps and approval data, teams gain visibility into where delays occur. Over time, this data supports continuous improvement, a hallmark of mature contract operations.
When a contract involves a public figure or sensitive compensation terms, security and compliance are non-negotiable. Enterprise teams face the same scrutiny from regulators and auditors.
Security baseline:
ZiaSign aligns with these standards, supporting enterprise requirements without overburdening users. According to NIST, access control and audit logging are core components of trustworthy systems (NIST).
Audit readiness depends on documentation quality. ZiaSign's immutable audit trails ensure every action is recorded, supporting internal reviews and external disputes alike.
For archived agreements, teams often need to compress or split files for sharing. Free tools like compress PDF and split PDF support secure handling without third-party risk.
Definition: Audit trail is a chronological record of system activities that enables reconstruction and examination of events.
This level of rigor is as relevant to athlete agreements as it is to procurement contracts or employment offers.
The broader lesson from Jared McCain's contract visibility is that contract excellence is a competitive advantage. Organizations that treat contracts as static documents fall behind those that manage them as data-rich assets.
Enterprise CLM strategy components:
ZiaSign supports this evolution with integrations across Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and more, plus an API for custom integrations. This ensures contracts connect to revenue, hiring, and compliance systems.
World Commerce & Contracting emphasizes that top-performing organizations integrate CLM with core business platforms to reduce leakage and improve cycle times (WorldCC).
For teams starting small, ZiaSign's free tier and 119 free PDF tools lower the barrier to adoption. As volume grows, enterprise plans add SSO and SCIM for identity management.
Key insight: The same tools that support a single high-profile deal can scale to thousands of contracts.
This scalability is what transforms contract management from a cost center into a strategic function.
Explore more guides at ziasign.com/blogs, or try our 119 free PDF tools.
Useful tools and comparisons:
Authoritative external sources:
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