To say that college athletes deserve compensation for their hard work and talent is a fair statement. However, over the past five years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has seen a dramatic change in landscape since they ruled in favor of the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) policy in July of 2021. As a result of the vote, athletes are allowed to profit from their personal brand through endorsements, appearances, social media and other platforms without losing eligibility to compete.
On paper, it sounds like a great idea to allow athletes to get paid. After all, they bring in a great amount of revenue for their school. While athletes deserve to be paid for bringing in billions of dollars for universities, the unregulated system by which NIL functions creates issues.
The introduction of NIL to college athletics has caused chaos in a relatively short period of time. And with the changes to the transfer portal that also happened in 2021, which allowed for athletes to transfer schools and play immediately, these changes have built off of one another to create the multitude of issues that are present in college athletics. These shifts in rules have made college athletics a business, and they have made it so that wealthy programs dominate recruiting. Beyond that, it leads recruits to choose a school based on NIL deals rather than development or academics. If athletes start their career at a smaller program and develop, they’ll be much more likely to leave their school given the transfer portal and NIL since there’s more money in it for them at a larger school. No longer are athletes loyal to their schools because of these two elements, and the NCAA is beginning to resemble professional free agency more than anything.
Because the NIL system is still fairly new to the NCAA, it has very few regulations, and it is in severe need of them. There is no salary cap for athletes, and deals can vary dramatically across programs. When NIL was introduced, it was supposed to allow athletes to profit from appearances and endorsements, but schools have tied deals into recruiting or staying at a school. Boosters promise money to athletes before they even commit to the school, let alone play for them. So although the original intent of NIL was to reward marketability in athletes, it has begun to function as a salary, and although that is technically prohibited by the NCAA, there has been very little enforcement. One of the most prominent reasons for this is that the NCAA lost a lot of its power to regulate compensation and athlete benefits. In 2021, prior to the allowance of NIL, the Supreme Court case NCAA v. Alston ruled against NCAA limits on certain athlete benefits and signaled that strict compensation restrictions could violate antitrust law. As a result, the NCAA became hesitant to enforce any sort of strict regulations in regards to NIL.
Beyond the lack of regulations in NIL, the transfer portal has added to the chaos in college athletics. The portal allows athletes to move schools quickly, re-open their recruitment and have the ability to enter the portal every year. College football now has an offseason free agency period just like the NFL. Because of that, college athletics is losing the tradition of players staying with one program and developing over time. Every season, rosters change dramatically, coaches leave more often and smaller programs are losing their best talent. A perfect example of an athlete who has taken full advantage of the transfer portal is quarterback TJ Finley. Finley started his collegiate career at Louisiana State University in 2021. Following his year at LSU, Finley has been a part of six other teams: Auburn, Texas State, Tulane, Western Kentucky, Georgia State and now, in his seventh year of eligibility, he is at the University of Incarnate Word. As a result of the transfer portal, many players like Finley never find a new team in which they fit and end up jumping from school to school. While the transfer portal was initially meant to give athletes freedom, it has created a system in which loyalty, stability and development have dissolved.
While athletes have moved around much more over recent years, so have coaches. Because of the transfer portal, coaches rebuild teams every year, whereas they used to build their programs. With the introduction of NIL, coaches often must raise money for players, and though the NCAA doesn’t directly control NIL collectives, coaches often depend on them. Recruiting has completely shifted its focus to funding, and coaches now compete financially with other programs. Specifically, college football has become a multi-billion dollar industry, and because of that, schools are much more aggressive about firing their coaches. Conferences like the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten distribute massive television revenue, so programs want immediate success, which makes schools more inclined to get rid of a coach. In that same sense, coaches are more inclined to leave a school to seek a bigger job. When better opportunities appear, coaches are now more likely to leave, like Lane Kiffin leaving the University of Mississippi for Louisiana State. Even though Kiffin had a great deal of success during his time at Ole Miss, when a bigger opportunity was presented to him, he took it.
Even though there are all sorts of issues with NIL and the transfer portal, the solution likely isn’t to eliminate them, because they provide great opportunities for college athletes. However, the system that is currently in place for the NCAA is in serious need of reform. Whether that is finding a way to separate NIL from recruiting, creating a salary or spending cap on NIL, or changing the governing body of the NCAA as a whole, something needs to be done. So while college athletes deserve to profit from their own name, image and likeness and should be allowed some options to transfer schools, there needs to be rules put in place. College athletics are unique in school loyalty and identity, tradition and stability, long-term development and the ideal of student-athletes, and the current system in place is quickly getting rid of the things that make it special.
