NIL Didn’t Kill College Athletics, Unlimited Transferring Did!

Let’s talk about it! Athletes have long been benefiting off of their Name Image and Likeness; it just wasn’t systematized legally within the NCAA confines until today. Reggie Bush famously lost his 2005 Heisman Trophy for this!

I think it’s great that the athletes driving a multi-billion dollar industry, largely attributed to conference TV deals, are finally receiving the compensation they deserve!

My poor Hurricanes on the other hand are getting pummeled by the wonderful television deal the ACC currently has, but hey good for you SEC and Big 10!

People usually clap back with: “college football is turning into professional sports”, and maybe it is to some extent! But, is it capitalizing off of NIL or the effective free agency frenzy the NCAA created that's the core problem?

By removing transfer limits (within eligibility restrictions) and no longer enforcing that players sit out a year after transferring schools, college athletics has become a microcosm of the NFL free agency system with multiple windows for athletes to enter and switch programs per year. Insert NIL collectives and contract negotiations that used to be foreign in college athletics, and you have effectively created a pro league just with eligibility restrictions. 

Now I’m all for transferring if a school or program isn’t for you to seek out a better opportunity for yourself elsewhere, but I think if the old transfer rules were still in effect in conjunction with today’s NIL structure we’d see a lot more athletes sticking it out and committing to bettering themselves and their programs even through the rough patches and new talent acquisition. 

The fan equity they would build at their institutions would open doors for new NIL opportunities that we haven't seen before, position battles would intensify, and roster turnover wouldn’t be so extreme from year to year! Recruiting would be more interesting with minimum time expectations, and coaching staffs wouldn’t have to convince their own players to stay on the roster each year.

I’ll leave you with a question:

College sports fans and finance professionals in my network - what are your thoughts on delaying NIL collective payouts until completion of a degree, college eligibility, or entrance into the portal? 

Players still earn their contracts from collectives as they do now, but they receive their payouts upon exit of the program. This would blend new age NIL with the amateurism of the NCAA and student athletics, just some food for thought!

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