Opinions on NIL in College Football

 For a long time, college athletes were not allowed to make money off of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). The NCAA strictly forbade it and was quick to punish those that even attempted to make a little money on the side while being a college athlete. That all changed however in the summer of 2021, when the NCAA announced that for the very first time, athletes would be allowed to pursue NIL opportunities, just as long as they were not performance based. In a matter of hours, popular players like then Auburn quarterback Bo Nix announced he had agreed to an NIL deal with Milo's Sweet Tea.

    For some, the newfound freedom for college athletes to become paid for their NIL signaled the end of college football as a truly "amateur" sport. The only thing that had separated college football from the NFL was the fact that college football players were unable to be compensated in any way other than an athletic scholarship. Now that they could sign deals with companies, ranging from as small as a local barbeque restaurant to as large as multimillion dollar companies like Dr Pepper, they were no longer truly amateur athletes. Many have stated that the NCAA may have opened the proverbial "pandora's box" by allowing something they used to consider as illegal. But I do not see it that way.

    You see, in my opinion, college athletes deserve the right to make money off of their NIL. They always have deserved the right to do so. The athletic scholarship they receive, while very helpful, is a crumb compared to what those players generate for their school, their conference, and their sport. Guys like Tim Tebow, Reggie Bush, Cam Newton, and so many others became synonymous with college football. Those three alone drew millions of eyes to their schools, and drew tens of millions in revenue for their schools. And that is just a couple of the names that helped make college football into one of the most popular sports in the world. When you take into account what college athletes do for their institutions financially, it begins to seem almost criminal that schools were getting away with just giving athletes a measly scholarship and not allowing them to so much as go do autograph signings for a couple hundred bucks, in exchange for making their school tens of millions of dollars. They basically were telling kids "Here, we'll give you about $30,000 worth of scholarships and gear, but you cannot go and make any money off of what you're doing, while we will be gleefully cashing those several million dollar checks you generate."

    By no means am I advocating for college athletes to be paid. I am however saying that the NCAA should have never stopped them from pursuing marketing opportunities. If a local car dealership wants to pay a kid $500 to come sign autographs at their dealership, the athlete should be allowed to come do it. If a company like Dr Pepper wants to pay an athlete to be featured in a commercial, the athlete should be allowed to do so. If a local air conditioning company wants to pay an athlete with a "cold" sounding name to do advertising, the athlete should've never been excluded from that opportunity. All three of those things I just mentioned are NIL deals I have personally seen. And I love that.

In short, the NCAA made the right decision allowing athletes to pursue NIL deals.