NIL Good for Athletes and Large Programs, Presents Issues for Smaller Programs
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has been the governing body of college athletics for years and calls the shots in the college sports world. For many years, student-athletes have been unable to profit off of their name, image, and likeness due to the NCAA’s rules. The NCAA’s rules said that athletes could not profit off of “outside money.” The NCAA claimed that this was in order to preserve the athlete’s “amateurism”, that college athletes are not professionals, and therefore they do not need to be compensated. In the pursuit of fairness, they provided athletes with scholarships to attend schools for sometimes little to no money at all.
Due to the outcry of the college sports community, National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, No. 20-512 found its way to the Supreme Court, where they ruled that athletes should be able to profit off of their NIL. As a result, around twenty-four states have set dates for when they will let players begin to profit of their NIL, thirteen of those have started since July 2021. This is a big movement that is happening in the college sports world, and many people are enthusiastic about it.
Nigel Hayes playing basketball for the Wisconsin Badgers
Photo from: NBC Sports
Nigel Hayes, a former Wisconsin basketball star, stated that, “It's good now though that the opportunity (will be) there, but I know for sure that if it would have been something I was allowed to do, the sky would have definitely been the limit with that.” Athletes in previous years did not get the opportunity to profit of their NIL which is understandably upsetting for former players like Hayes.
I believe that athletes should have been able to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. College athletes are due to have big fan bases that would easily pay to see them or get autographs from them.
Athletes can now profit off of their own personal brands. For example, Indiana basketball player and Moeller alumni, Logan Duncomb, has started to create his own t-shirts in which he has seen sales and profit.
Athletes before the NCAA change were really just broke college kids unless they had a strong financial family background. A study by the National College Players Association found that in 2019 before the change to the NIL laws, 86% of college athletes lived below the federal poverty line.
LaDontae Henton, a basketball player for The University of Rhode Island, said that, “Guys need it. Some guys come up in a background with nothing and then they come to college, but nothing changes. They still have nothing.” Colleges do not provide athletes with any pocket money, and more importantly, student athletes are prevent, by rule, from working while they are on scholarship. Anyone reading this and thinking that these kids need to go get a job should be aware that the NCAA doesn’t allow athletes to work like their fellow college classmates.
The top five highest paid college football coaches are making anywhere from seven to nine million dollars a year, but the players earn from their stipends around three-thousand dollars a month, which is around eight dollars a day. The problem with this is the players are the people making the plays, taking the big hits, and putting their bodies on the line each day during practice and on Saturdays. College coaches are the faces of giant football programs, and I do think they deserve to be paid a lot, but they are not as crucial as the players are. Not only this, but colleges are bringing in tens of millions of dollars each year, and a athletic department like Texas is said to be worth over a billion dollars. Even though colleges do have to pay countless other staff, coaches, and administrators in their athletic departments, stipends for players only take up about one percent money earned each year. With that much money coming in, that percentage should be bumped up. This would have helped players who needed money to be able to live modest college lifestyle.
Mark Few coaching his team during a Gonzaga basketball game.
Photo by: informationcradle.com
Even though the NIL is a seems like glamorous new deal for athletes, there are a few oppositions to it. One big problem is how this will affect small schools. Smaller schools will not have as much fire power as the Power 5 Conference programs. It is said that the smaller athletic departments have one person to handle NIL while bigger college programs will have a whole department for this. This might mean that a lot of good athletes will stay away from these smaller schools which would be absolutely devastating for them.
Gonzaga’s men’s basketball coach Mark Few said that NIL will lead to “unfair advantages in recruiting.” This is true because twenty-four states so far are allowing or have set dates to allow players to profit off of NIL. What does this say about the other twenty-six states though? This means that those states are not allowing players to profit off of their NIL. Those programs in the twenty-four states will be using their advantage to help with recruiting, which might sway players to lean towards their program.
Ultimately the outcomes of the new name, image, and likeness rules will be shown here in next upcoming years. Only time will tell if this will have the lasting effects that the NCAA and players want to happen.