RALEIGH, N.C. — And Happy First Anniversary to college athletics’ NIL era. Roses, chocolates, maybe a Cameo message from your favorite college athlete all make for an appropriate celebratory gift. A year ago Friday, on July 1, 2021, the NCAA granted college athletes the right to profit off of their name, image and likeness.
And what a year it has been.
Just think of all the joy it has brought us: college athletes on Cameo, offering silly videos for money. The fun in deciphering whether some of these especially large sums we hear about from time to time — $9.5 million for a football recruit! — are grounded in reality. The epic Jimbo Fisher press conference, in which he suggested Nick Saban’s mama should’ve slapped him more as a child, given Saban’s assertion that Texas A&M had bought its entire football recruiting class.
And to think that, in the not-so-distant past, a major college football offseason storyline involved the horror of Ohio State football players receiving free tattoos. Isn’t it much better this way?
We’ve learned a lot throughout the first year of this new NIL world. And plenty of things, we’ve yet to learn. So let’s get to it: the Definitive List of Things We’ve Learned through year one of these new NIL times:
College sports as we knew them did not end
Well, how ‘bout that?
Since the beginning of time, or at least since the beginning of the NCAA, those in charge of college athletics predicted doom and destruction should the day come when athletes could make money. “It’d sully the sanctity of amateurism!” they argued. “Fans would tune out if they knew players were getting paid!” they warned. “There’d be no separating the product from the pros!” they said.
Wrong. All wrong.
For decades, the NCAA — which, remember, is nothing more than its member institutions — fought every effort for athletes to receive compensation. Even the prospect of common sense measures, like full cost of attendance and the right for schools to award athletes academic performance bonuses based on their grades, became subject to long, drawn-out legal fights.
The NCAA’s arguments were always the same, right up until the moment it realized it could argue no more. Thanks to a domino effect of states passing laws allowing athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness, the NCAA at last relented in granting NIL rights in the summer of 2021. It had no other choice.
And yet despite the organization’s arguments to the contrary, college athletics did not, in fact, implode. College football remains as popular (if not as predictable) as ever. College basketball might just benefit from the NIL era more than any other sport (more on this in a bit). And athletes, at last, can benefit financially without the fear of winding up in NCAA eligibility jail.
A year into this new reality, one of the main questions can only be: What took so long?
Things are messy, and likely will remain so
The positives of this NIL era are innumerable. Most notable, athletes can finally share the wealth of the billion-dollar enterprise that is major college sports. In the process, they can build their brands and learn a thing or two about entrepreneurship, skills they can carry into the real world.
But it’s not all great. As North Carolina football coach Mack Brown put it at the ACC’s spring meetings in May, “We went too fast — whoever ‘we’ is. And we didn’t understand the consequences before we made the initiative. And now we’re figuring out all the things that we should have thought about before (NIL) started, and we’ve got to figure out how to fix them.”
Brown was talking about a lot of things, but most of all he was talking about the reality that NIL has often become pay-for-play by another name. (More on that in a bit, as well.) That’s not the only problem, though. A year into this new world, and we’re still waiting for the NCAA to come up with a firm framework, with enforceable rules and guidance, for how it should all work.
Meanwhile, the NCAA is begging Congress to step in. Which brings us to the next point ...
NIL has (again) exposed the NCAA’s lack of leadership
The NCAA and its member institutions had years to develop and implement a workable system surrounding NIL, but instead spent those years in court fighting the tide of inevitable change. And then, left with no other choice but to accept reality, Mark Emmert and those charged with running college athletics simply threw up their hands and opened the floodgates.
Few developments throughout the history of college athletics has exposed the NCAA’s lack of vision and failure to be proactive than the beginning of the NIL era. The NCAA begged Congress for help (sensing a theme here?) and, when none arrived, Emmert and other people who get paid a lot of money to be in charge of wealthy conferences and universities pretty much said:
“Welp, we’ve got nothing.”
The grumbling surrounding NIL, in some corners of the college sports world, has been nothing if not entertaining. Athletes are making money, and it’s affecting things like recruiting and the transfer portal, and some are not happy. To which the only logical reply is that you — the “you” being those who’ve always held the power in college athletics — could’ve chosen to get in front of this and set the course. But that would’ve required leadership and a cohesive strategy.
The biggest benefactor, other than athletes: College basketball
It’d probably be too strong to suggest that men’s college basketball was on life support before NIL, but the game wasn’t exactly all that healthy, either. Not with many of the most talented players abandoning the sport after one year to pursue professional opportunities, or bypassing it altogether to play in Europe or with a developmental league.
But now, thanks to NIL opportunities, players have more of an incentive than they’ve had in a long time to stay. North Carolina’s Armando Bacot has become Exhibit A of what’s possible, what with his mom telling Sports Illustrated in a recently-published story that Bacot is making somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars through various NIL ventures.
It’s great for Bacot. It’s great for UNC. It’s great for college basketball, that a player of his caliber has chosen to stick around. Roy Williams, the former UNC coach, used to lament that college basketball had become a “bus stop” on the way to somewhere else, with the best of the best in a hurry to get to the NBA draft.
Now, though, the sport could enter something of a reawakening. Sure, a lot of guys will still be motivated to enter the NBA as quickly as possible. But for those on the margins, staying in school suddenly makes a lot more sense. Would you rather be a Big Man on Campus making several hundred thousand dollars while playing in front of adoring fans, or living the anonymous grind of life in the G League or somewhere in Europe?
It’s enough to make anyone mournful of those who came before and missed the chance to maximize their earning power at the height of their exposure. Sticking with UNC, imagine what Marcus Paige could’ve commanded in an NIL world. Think about all those others who left school early in a rush to make money who might’ve made a different choice today.
It’s not just revenue sport athletes profiting
Football and basketball players, predictably, have generated the most NIL money. According to Opendorse, a company that helps college athletes navigate NIL opportunities, football players have accounted for nearly half of all of the revenue generated by NIL deals, with men’s basketball a distant second.
The gap between men’s and women’s basketball, though, is a small one — and according to Opendorse’s data, four of the top six sports in terms of generating NIL revenue are women’s sports. The others, in addition to basketball, are volleyball, softball and swimming and diving.
Those non-revenue sports might just represent this NIL era in the purest form of its intent. Not that pay-for-play disguised as NIL hasn’t crept in there, too — because it undoubtedly has, in some cases — but because, generally, the athletes in less visible sports have to work harder, or smarter, to generate their money-making opportunities.
At its best, the new NIL landscape has provided something like a graduate-course education in marketing and business. And then there’s the other side, and the reality that ...
A lot of what’s described as NIL, isn’t actually NIL
The NCAA is far from the only entity that has stumbled through the past year of this new college sports world. The media, at times, has faltered, too, and imprecise wording and reporting has often blurred the lines between NIL as it was intended and what it’s actually become, in many cases.
At times, the distinction is clear and easy enough. Take, for instance, the college football players who signed endorsement deals with Bojangles last season, or an athlete who sets up a merchandise business or signs autographs for a fee, or a number of athletes who’ve taken advantage of NIL freedom to set up accounts on Cameo, where they can make a little money by recording video messages for a price. No one would argue the legitimacy of those smaller NIL deals.
But the football recruit who’s allegedly receiving millions to commit to a certain school? Or the basketball player who’s allegedly receiving hundreds of thousands to transfer somewhere else?
Set aside some, or even most, of the numbers that are floating around, given that it’s impossible to know whether any of them are accurate. (You should be skeptical.) Even understanding that, NIL turning into the latest recruiting arms race was not exactly how any of this was supposed to work. That it’s happening, anyway, is perhaps the most predictable aspect of all of this. Who — aside from literally everyone — would have guessed that NIL deals would simply provide cover for schools to pay higher-profile athletes through arrangements with boosters or, say, the friendly local mom-and-pop business with a vested interest in State U.?
The story of Jaden Rashada, a prolific quarterback prospect, is the latest example. On3.com reported recently that Rashada received an NIL deal worth $9.5 million to commit to Miami over Florida, which later claimed it wasn’t involved in the supposed bidding war. In any case, Rashada’s deal, if the numbers are true, is believed to be the most lucrative ever for a recruit.
No one should begrudge Rashada, or anyone else, for commanding as much money as they can get. The problem, though, is that pay-for-play under the guise of NIL has created a murky subworld that is difficult, if not impossible, to regulate. The result has been something of a free-for-all, with the “Wild West” becoming the cliche of choice to describe the landscape.
Which leads us to another reality ...
Enforcement of supposed NIL rules has been nonexistent
Quick: Name the last time a state cracked down on an NIL deal that broke a law, or appeared unscrupulous. And then name the last time the NCAA opened a formal investigation into a questionable NIL deal.
While there are plenty of state laws covering NIL, and vague NCAA guidance, there’s been little to no apparent enforcement effort, neither at the state level nor through the NCAA. The lack of enforcement has undoubtedly fueled the anything-goes nature of this new world order — or, if you’re as cynical as some, it’s brought more into the light the sort of under-the-table dealings that have been a part of major college sports since, well, forever.
No one is against athletes making money these days, and those who might oppose it are usually smart enough to keep that unpopular opinion to themselves. The money-making is not the problem. The problem, as several coaches and athletic directors put at the ACC’s recent spring meetings, is confusion over rules, the lack of enforcement and the reality that none of this is going to be solved any time soon, if ever.
The NCAA in early May released a statement in which it essentially warned against pay-for-play under the guise as NIL and Jim Phillips, the ACC commissioner, tried to argue that the NCAA’s “directive was clear,” he said. While the clarity of the NCAA’s statement is debatable, Phillips argued that the NCAA wanted to investigate “egregious” cases of NIL deals that are, in reality, pay-for-play.
The problems here are many. For starters, the NCAA enforcement staff is small and ill-equipped to police hundreds of athletic departments and the limitless number of deals within those departments. Remember, we’re still waiting for some of the final enforcement decisions in the Adidas basketball corruption case that emerged in 2017.
Then, when it comes to NIL, how does one define what an “egregious” case of pay-for-play is? Phillips couldn’t articulate it at ACC spring meetings, and the NCAA enforcement staff would be hard-pressed to do the same, given there the endless variables involved in NIL deals. They often depend on the school, its location, the potential marketability of the player. Is it possible that a high-profile football recruit could actually be worth upwards of $10 million in NIL money?
Sure, it’s possible. And any competent lawyer would be able to make that argument in court.
Which raises another point: If the NCAA does go after various NIL deals, and attempt to strike them down or rule an athlete ineligible or penalize a school, what’s the likely outcome? There’s a good chance such a case would wind up in court, where the NCAA has not fared all that well in recent decades. So what’s the NCAA to do? It can try to talk tough and dangle the threat of investigations.
In reality, its options are limited. Which leads us to the final point we’ve learned, definitively, over the past year ...
There’s no going back
As Notre Dame basketball coach Mike Brey eloquently described it at ACC meetings, describing some of his brethren who might be beholden to the ways of yesteryear: “We got to stop complaining, like, this is the world we’re in. ... So everybody should shut up and adjust.”
Shut up and adjust. The unofficial mantra of coaches, like Brey, who understand these times.
It does, though, feel like we’re in a bit of a holding pattern. The so-called “Wild West” can’t prevail forever — or so the hope goes, lest sports writers keep using the term. Brey was joking in May when he raised the possibility of an NIL salary cap, but might that sort of idea actually have potential?
The NCAA and its members continue to hope for divine intervention from Congress — even Brey, otherwise forward-thinking, referenced that — but Congress these days (and most) has enough on its plate. College sports people, including athletes, would be well-served to get together and shape the future they want.
Does it lead to an employee-employer sort of model? It feels a bit like an inevitability. At the least, does some sort of college athlete union emerge, with the ability to collectively bargain? If there’s going to be limits surrounding NIL, or a salary-cap-like structure in place, athletes would have to have a seat at the table in deciding those potential limits.
For now, though, the free-for-all prevails. Or the Wild West, if you prefer. Giddy-up.
