From the expanded 12-team playoff, to the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) policy, money is driving changes in college sports at a pace rarely, if ever, seen before.
For most of the existence of college athletics, student athletes could only be rewarded for their play with an athletic scholarship and little to no other compensation. For decades, coaches and boosters tried to find their way around the laws against paying players enacted by college sports’ main governing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Many times, $100 handshakes between players and boosters after games slipped by, but some programs who were too brazen in bending the rules — be it via money, cars, jobs or homes, etc., for players or their parents — got caught and reaped the consequences.
Things got much easier for coaches and boosters hoping to lure top athletes to their campuses in 2021, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the NCAA’s appeal of its antitrust lawsuit. That ruling cleared the way for college athletes to make money through endorsement deals and other personal business ventures, including jersey sales, use of their NIL in video games, commercial endorsements and more.
The only problem was the NCAA, athletic conferences and schools didn’t have a framework to govern the new reality and thus struggled with how to put some sort of guidance in place.
Combined with recently eased player transfer eligibility rules, schools’ collectives (organized boosters) have been able to essentially bid on the best college and high school prospects with the promise of a huge NIL deal.
Players are now cashing in and going to the schools that offer the biggest financial promise. But already, some recruits and schools and their collectives have seen deals go bust.
Former Florida recruit and current Georgia quarterback Jaden Rashada has a pending lawsuit against Florida coach Billy Napier and the program’s top booster over a failed NIL deal worth nearly $14 million.
This season even saw a player leave his team three games into the season after his NIL deal went belly up. Quarterback Matthew Sluka, who transferred from College of the Holy Cross to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV), led the Running Rebels to a 3-0 start, but when the $100,000 he said he was promised in a verbal agreement didn’t clear his account, he decided to step away from the team, declare a red-shirt season and transfer to another school with his remaining eligibility.
Both of these examples have the potential to sully reputations and the game. Some say the players are selfish and, in Sluka’s case, he abandoned his teammates. But it’s just as easy to say that the schools’ involved parties have been bad actors in these cases and may be in the future, too.
Make no mistake about it, schools are looking to cash in on their athletic programs. One can tell that simply by looking at the consolidation of major conferences and the expansion of postseason opportunities — most noticeably in football.
In just the last few years, the potential for expanding the financial pie has caused athletic conferences to grow, sometimes in illogical directions. For most of our lifetimes, schools belonged to regional-based conferences. Not all of them can say that anymore. The Big 10, traditionally made up of schools from the Midwest, now includes two Los Angeles-based schools — USC and UCLA. The Atlantic Coast Conference, long made up of schools in states along the Eastern seaboard, now includes California and Stanford. Strange bedfellows indeed. But this “growth” was driven by the member schools’ desire to remain among the upper echelon of highest-earning programs, and they’re making bank through expanded television and marketing deals.
While personally I’m happy that players now have an avenue to be paid, I think the NCAA, conference and school leadership need to establish some governance to provide an equitable solution. As it is, “rich” schools can offer more attractive financial incentives than others, which, if left unbridled, will lead to disparities in fairness, recruitment and competition.
The question now is whether those currently in place can flesh out a mutually beneficial way forward for athletic programs and student athletes.
Chris Price is an award-winning journalist and public relations principal. When he’s not writing, he’s avid about music, the outdoors, and Saints, Ole Miss and Chelsea football.
