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UteBacker.
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NashvilleUteFan
ParticipantA lot has been said about NIL and the transfer portal and the impact it is having on college football. I’d like to start a discussion around what NIL is supposed to be and what it has morphed into.
NIL literally stands for name, image and likeness. So the idea that a player gets paid “NIL” means that said player can monetize their popularity and their personal brand through endorsement deals, commercials, promoting products, etc.
If you really think about that, there are probably only 3-5 players (maybe even less) on your average P4 football team who are popular enough to have any value attached to their name, image, and likeness. There’s a reason not every NBA player has their own signature shoe.
So you put that into perspective for a guy like Cam Calhoun, who quite frankly in my opinion does not have a personal brand that would be realistically valued at more than a few thousand dollars if that. What we are calling “NIL” is not really NIL at all. You can call it that for a guy like cam rising who does have the popularity and the personal brand that has tangible value, but for someone like Calhoun, pretty much any compensation he receives has nothing to do with his name image and likeness and everything to do with his play on the field.
So let’s just call it what it is. For the vast majority of players It’s pay for play, just like any other professional athlete.
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The Miami UteParticipantWell, you’re not wrong. As I understand it, what NIL is supposed to do is allow players to capitalize on their popularity and positive name recognition. As you say, what it really has done is turn what was putatively an amateur sport into a professional minor league. I don’t know how the powers that be are ever going to put the genie back in the bottle. Right now, I would say that most college players have the expectation that they deserve to be paid, in and above free tuition, for whatever work they do on the field. Certainly every starter at the P4 feels that way. And, because there are no guardrails at all in the current system, that means that every offseason is free agency season.
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Participant
I think the school’s involvement in NIL has tainted what it was meant to be. There never should have been restrictions on a collegiate athlete signing an endorsement deal with a major corporation like Nike or doing a commercial for a small local company and getting paid for it. The NCAA had no right to own a player’s name image and likeness, that doesn’t fundamentally make any sense.
They (the NCAA) finally lost that battle which was a great thing. These kids have every right to earn compensation using their own popularity, and now they can with no restriction. Where the issue is, is that they now expect the university to not only facilitate that but also put up the money. If an executive at Nike approaches a player and tells him he’ll pay him NIL but only if he plays for Oregon, well then that’s their right because it’s their money and it’s then the players right (and probably in their best interest) to go to Oregon. But the university themselves should not be facilitating that interaction, and that is absolutely happening now.
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Participant
NIL was never meant to be athletic department revenue sharing. But that’s what it’s becoming.
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The Miami UteParticipant
Revenue sharing and NIL are two separate issues. Some people conflate the two because they both involve players getting paid, something that was strictly verboten under the previous system. But you’re right, the next step is revenue sharing and players becoming employees of universities. I believe that’s the end of the line in college athletics for a lot of schools, specifically the elite academic schools and those schools that are just getting by at the moment. As I mentioned before, there’s something called the law of unintended consequences. If and when universities start dropping athletics because A. Principle or B. They can’t afford the added cost, a lot of individuals, primarily in underserved populations. will lose the opportunity for upward mobility seeing as they probably wouldn’t be able to get to a campus but for their athletic abilities.
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UteBackerModeratorEvery kid gets a trophy generation, unrestricted transfer portal, huge gaps in conference membership value, large booster/donor disparities, a worthless NCAA with no backbone, and no tampering transparency or accountability among the different schools.
What could go wrong?
I don’t begrudge these college athletes from trying to “get theirs” while they can, but damn.
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