We have Reached new Levels of NIL Insanity....Again
It’s been a while since I’ve had something to talk about. We’re in the summer months so inspiration is a bit limited. But this story right here made me so upset I had to jump on it. There are a lot of moving parts so if you tend to multitask while reading, you may want to sit down for this one. Former Nike CEO Phil Knight is prepared to back up the brinks truck to see Oregon win. How does he intend to do this? We’ve come to know and loathe it, NIL.
Recap
Let's go over a quick review of what NIL is in a nutshell. The Name Image and Likeness was established after the Supreme Court ruled that college athletes must be able to profit as opposed to the school and athletic departments keeping all the money for themselves. This allowed companies and even professional teams to collaborate and make business deals with NCAA athletes. Athletes are now able to make sponsorship deals and make money for promoting them, and starting in the 24-25 season they will also start getting game checks. I'm not an expert in it and I don't pretend to be, but this is a synopsis which is hopefully easy enough to make sense of.
It hasn't taken long for things to get out of control. Players are flipping colleges because of the promise of making more NIL money elsewhere. The most recent example is Kyle McCord who was the starting quarterback at Ohio State. In part because Ohio State would not give him more NIL funds (and because he was not guaranteed the starting job again), he transferred to the ACC school in New York that starts with S that I refuse to mention by name. Google it, you’ll figure it out. College sports is no longer about recruiting and finding the best fit for the athlete while also furthering education. It's turned into an outlandish bidding war. We have 18 year old’s becoming millionaires before they even graduate from high school just by choosing the college that gives them the biggest pay day. What the hell are we doing????
Back to Oregon
Phil Knight has committed to provide UNLIMITED funds to Oregon for them to win championships. It's basically a blank check. Bigger schools have more boosters than can provide donations to athletics, and with Oregon now in the BIG 10 you can make the case that even more donations will come in to keep pace with the likes of powerhouses like Michigan. Some will say if it’s this easy everyone should do it, but that’s just not how it works, and that’s another part of the problem.
Schools in weaker conferences who don’t have rich alumni are screwed. Boise State is not getting crazy money to win the Mountain West. Coastal Carolina can’t attract the level of boosters needed to dominate the Sun Belt and move out of the conference. And don’t even get me started on UMASS because lord knows football has gone into the tubes so far that even the most loyal alumni won’t bother to invest. Right wrong or otherwise, the level of performance of the major sports, especially football, dictates investments. But then you have schools like Clemson who refuse to use NIL, and by doing this they won’t be able to compete with everyone else who is going all in and embracing it. The service academies are employees of the federal government so NIL is off limits. It’s a lose lose situation. Much like in our world today, whoever knows somebody or has rich friends will get ahead. Anyone who doesn’t, oh well.
I'm not naive enough to believe tampering hasn't been happening for years, but now tampering is legal and encouraged. On top of that, if you aren’t tampering, you aren’t trying or serious about winning. The NCAA opened Pandora’s Box by allowing this to happen and there is no going back. There can be limitations by putting a salary cap on spending, but naturally that would be the right thing to do and we know the NCAA for lack of better words ain't got time for that. All of this is wrong on so many levels but at as long as the people in charge are getting paychecks, nobody is going to give a damn enough to fix it.