The NIL era turns college sports into the Wild West

At a special meeting between the SEC and Big Ten conferences this week, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said: “The idea that college football is broken – what we’re doing is broken – is just not right.”

I disagree. It looks pretty broken to me.

But it’s also possible that it’s only temporarily broken, and that some of the factors that are destroying college sports also make them better in the long run.

I’m referring to the two factors that are combining to create a tectonic shift in college athletics: conference realignment and the NIL (name, image and likeness) floodgates that opened on July 1, 2021, when the NCAA began to allow college athletes to take money from endorsement deals.

The rush to realignment has led to a breathtaking game of musical chairs (our own Amanda Christovich has been omnipresent in this relentless rhythm lately) that has left us with conferences whose regional names no longer make sense (California schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference). ?) and whose composition will give players sleepless travel plans.

When I recently interviewed Roger Federer’s long-time agent Tony Godsick in our interview FOS In the studio he surprised me with his sudden violent reaction when I mentioned NIL: “I’m not a big fan of this NIL stuff. My son will be a sophomore at Stanford, playing [tennis] That’s where he is now in the ACC. …How is this supposed to work? When he’s done playing UNC or Virginia, it’s a long flight back home.” There are obvious ways realignment and NIL have overlapping effects, but today I’m going to focus entirely on NIL.

Former NCAA President Mark Emmert fought tooth and nail to allow college athletes to be paid under the long-held NCAA definition of “amateurism,” drawing fire for years from those who advocated for players’ pay criticized, which became even more popular view. The following suit of Emmert and his ilk became the subject of ridicule, a “boomer” attitude seen as rooted in greed; Ben Strauss and Joe Nocera co-authored a 2016 book arguing that college athletes are comparable to NCAA contract employees.

The argument for paying players has always been, broadly speaking, this: They are essentially professional athletes in all but name; They generate billions of dollars in collective revenue for their schools and conferences. they are exploited by not being paid; Scholarships are not sufficient compensation.

While I can take issue with some of this, for the most part I think that the idea of ​​amateurism when the games are broadcast nationally under multi-billion dollar media rights deals is absurd, and that if you believe in capitalism you should support some of it Money goes to the players.

But Emmert was right about one thing: Once you open Pandora’s Box, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube – and whatever other mixed metaphors you want to use here.

Three years into the NIL era, it’s clear that everyone is just flying by the seat of their pants and writing the rules as they go.

Oklahoma State announced before the CFB season that it would place scannable QR codes on players’ helmets that link to a fundraising page for the school’s NIL collective. On game day, just before the start of OSU’s first game, the school said the NCAA had rejected the QR codes on the grounds that they were “advertising and/or trademarks” protected by existing NCAA bylaws were forbidden. But if the NIL Collective is kosher and the invitation to donate to the NIL Collective is kosher, then what’s wrong with promoting the donation page? The answer is that it is one of many pre-existing rules that need to be changed immediately to adapt to the new era – so that everything doesn’t look arbitrary.

But no incident has garnered as much mainstream attention as the story of Matthew Sluka, the UNLV quarterback who was leading the Rebels to a 3-0 start when he suddenly announced he was leaving because of “certain statements that were made.” “The rest of the season would be off for me” from the school’s NIL collective. As it emerged during a frenzied round of news reports, Sluka, his agent and his father believe he was promised $100,000 in zero money by the school and never got it (but the deal was never put in writing). As our Margaret Fleming wrote, “This is believed to be the first time in the NIL era that an athlete has been eliminated in the middle of the season because of collective payments (or lack thereof).”

Maybe the first, but he won’t be the last.

Last week, as part of a panel discussion on NIL at Advertising Week New York, I had the perfect group to comment on the Sluka situation. My panelists were Rachel Baker, GM of Duke men’s basketball; Brian Mason, NIL director at the University of Wisconsin; Catherine Marquette, head of university partnerships at Under Armour; and Jeff Granger, a graduate and former basketball player at Hampton University in Virginia and founder of the NIL collective.

Explaining the Duke perspective, Baker said, “When you make these promises to these athletes and families, in many ways the collective has to be a reflection of what you tell them every day.” This literally couldn’t happen at Duke.”

My translation: We are more cautious; we draw up a contract; and no one should make a decision about accepting a university based on a verbal agreement.

Granger, of Hampton, expressed his perspective as a loyal alumnus who wants to help his alma mater, a middle school that plays in the Coastal Athletic Association: “Duke will be Duke, Wisconsin will be Wisconsin, and the advertising and television revenue, everything .” That will come into play. Things look different for us. … We can’t play the same way in the portal because we don’t have the same wallet. … Now we’re recruiting a high school student who’s going to be a freshman and transfer after his sophomore year because we can’t afford him.”

This is where the conversation in college sports recruiting ended: Can we? afford this player? How much will they cost us and how long will they stay?

Meanwhile, both the NIL director and GM positions in the college sports environment are newer roles that are rapidly multiplying across college athletic departments. (Former NBA scoop master Adrian Wojnarowski is now men’s basketball GM at his alma mater St. Bonaventure.) It’s clear to me that no one, including the people in these jobs, knows exactly what they’re supposed to be. The descriptions vary from school to school and everyone feels their way over time.

The same goes for the sponsor-led NIL collectives: brand new organizations that have in many cases done a lot of good for their school, but have also been subjected to very little oversight and in some cases have made blatant transgressions that have also been complied with Slaps on the wrist (see: Miami women’s basketball, FSU football, Florida football).

I hardly want to present a new opinion here. Anyone can see that NIL mania has glaring problems. It’s easy to find much angrier views online claiming that NIL is ruining college sports.

I’m not ready to say that yet. Many college athletes have used large portions of their zero money to do a lot of good for others. Instead, I’ll just say that the NIL era is off to a slapdash start. And I suspect it will take a few more chaotic years before the turmoil subsides. We will watch as the Wild West is conquered.