You may have heard that intercollegiate athletics is like the “wild west” these days. With the new transfer rule and NIL (Name, Image and Likeness), the landscape is shifting like never before.
Let me preface this with I firmly believe that collegiate athletes deserve to make money off their NIL and deserve compensation for the value they bring to athletics departments around the country.
But…thanks to everyone’s favorite organization, the NCAA, things have gotten a bit out of hand.
When the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA in the Alston case in June of 2021, its stance was clear. The NCAA had gotten away with its definition of “amateurism” for too long, and it was time for things to change.
With NIL set to go into effect just 11 days later, the NCAA backed itself into a corner. Its stagnation had put it on the clock, and unsurprisingly, it failed to rise to the occasion.
With just days remaining, the NCAA threw its hands up and waved the white flag. It said for schools to follow state laws or create your own guidelines if none were in place in your state.
The lack of leadership at the NCAA has brought us to today. The “wild west” of NIL is way wilder than you can imagine. There are basically just two NCAA rules with NIL. Pay-for-play, or paying an athlete for direct, on-the-field performance, is still not allowed, and NIL cannot be used to “induce” a recruit or an athlete to attend a school.
Well, if you have even half paid attention to the sports news over the last five months, you would know that rumors and reports are swirling all over the country about NIL dealings that seemingly directly conflict with those two rules.
Whether it is Texas A&M boosters allegedly dropping between $25-$30 million on this past recruiting class, Tennessee allegedly paying a high school quarterback $8 million or USC allegedly tampering with and then offering Pitt’s Jordan Addison $3 million to transfer to USC, the college football universe is in hot debate over NIL.
The thing is, we should not be surprised. The NCAA brought this upon intercollegiate athletics by failing to set guidelines and rules adequately.
Now, the NCAA has updated its guidelines, as always laughably late to the party. It even stated it plans to punish schools that previously violated its new guidelines.
First, I don’t know how the NCAA has any power to actually enforce these penalties. The NCAA is a dying organization watching its power dwindle day by day. If I were a school, I would just simply keep delaying and fighting the NCAA to fend it off until its inevitable death.
One thing cannot be denied. NIL is being manipulated to disrupt the landscape and tamper with players on other rosters. Mid-level Group of Five and Power Five rosters will be stripped for parts by powerhouses willing to throw more money at the players.
In my mind, the NCAA has two options.
The first requires the dead husk of the NCAA somehow mustering up the remainder of its dwindling power to discipline those who broke the inducement and pay-for-play rules with no caveats. Alabama all the way down to UMass. Every school must be examined thoroughly. Violators must be punished to keep any sort of order in intercollegiate athletics. If not, the demise of the NCAA that you can see on the horizon will arrive expeditiously.
The second option is to punt on amateurism and begin allowing players to sign employment contracts with schools. Of course, this would require the NCAA to admit that amateurism was a farce used to keep from paying student-athletes. What this would do is lock players into their contracts and prevent tampering. Gone would be student-athletes holding schools hostage and threatening to hit the transfer portal unless more NIL money appeared like Isaiah Wong.
I do not see how the NCAA can survive the NIL landscape without one of these two options. Suppose action is not taken to regain some control. In that case, the “wild west” will devolve into complete lawlessness. The programs in power with significant financial backing like Alabama and Texas A&M will lay waste to intercollegiate athletics and leave smoldering craters at schools like Wake Forest.
Either way, something has to change…