Why The NIL Is Good For College Sports
Some people love and hate it, but regardless of how you feel about it, the Name, Image, and Likeness rule has changed college sports. The NIL is a hot topic in sports chat rooms and social media pages across the internet. Those against it don't really understand what it is, how it looks, or how college athletes lived before it existed.
What Is The NIL?
The NIL is a rule that allows college athletes to sell their name, image, or likeness to anyone interested in paying for those things. Maybe a shoe company would like to have a college point guard endorse their product. Perhaps EA Sports would like to include the player in a video game. Now, it's OK for an athlete to be compensated for such things.
This is not new. For years, Olympic athletes were able to do commercials and appear on cereal boxes for money and maintain their amateur status because they were not being paid to play their sport but rather just for a photograph. This begs the question: If it's good enough for the Olympics, why was it shunned by the most corrupt organization in sports—cough, I mean, the NCAA?
That's because the NCAA would sell the images of their athletes and pocket the money. The NCAA would allow their players to appear in a game or TV promo if the check went to them and not the player. They did this under the guise of protecting the player's amateur status and preserving the innocence of college sports.
In 2014, an anti-trust lawsuit was filed against the college sports governing body in the case of Ed O'Bannon vs The NCAA. O'Bannon and his brother Charles were basketball players at UCLA who felt that the University used their image and likeness without their permission and profited from it. A judge agreed and ruled in favor of the athletes.
Who Can And Can't Pay The Athletes?
A typical NIL deal is funded by a business or entity, usually alums of a University. Still, it doesn't have to be (Caleb Williams signed a contract with Wendy's at USC, while founder Dave Thomas dropped out of high school and earned his GED in 1993). To lure top athletes to their alma mater, business owners will sign a player to a contract to be paid as a spokesperson for that business.
The business owner can not say the contract depends on the player signing with the University, nor can they imply it is a reward for attending. Universities can not tell a player they will get an NIL deal if they attend, and they are not allowed to pay the player (outside of a scholarship and a small monthly stipend).
So when somebody says big schools have more money to pay players, they are wrong. Big schools usually have larger groups of wealthy alumni who can pay the players. If a college pays a player, promises an NIL deal, or suggests a business owner offer a deal to a player if they attend the college, this would be an NCAA violation, and the school would be penalized.
Take Your Scholarship And Stuff It!
One of the biggest mythn the general publiis forced toey believe is that these are "student-athletes" and their sport is an extracurricular activity. As such, the players should not be paid. Some people will argue that a free education should be enough for these kids. It's valued at $50,000 - 100,000 per year.
Remember that a college education doesn't cost the school that much money. It would be like McDonald's paying their employees with free meal vouchers instead of cash. If these educations are so valuable, why did Alabama pay Nick Saban $10 million a year instead of offering him free online courses for a PhD instead?
The NCAA may have duped kids with that lie for years, all the while preventing them from getting jobs or playing for a different school right away. Then, when CBS offered a few billion dollars to show the kids on TV, the school took the money and laughed in the kids' faces. The tide has turned, and justice is finally raining down on athletic directors across the land.
So why would someone behind a keyboard or at the local pub have a problem with a college football player selling his autograph for $10,000? Jealousy. Plain and simple. People will claim that these kids should not be getting paid what people want to give them because they don't think that 18 and 19-year-old kids should get that kind of money. They'll say, "If you want money, get a job at Burger King like I did in college."
Two types of people hate seeing these kids get paid. The first is the person who has no talents or gifts that anyone would ever pay them for. So they think if kids get paid to play sports, they should get paid millions to drink beer and watch them play sports. The second are old white men who work in a big building in Indianapolis and want all that money for themselves.
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