In 2021, the NCAA passed a new policy allowing college athletes to profit from themselves and their sport. With this new policy, teams from all sports in college fill their rosters with players making millions and offer them an obscene amount of money. Could these NIL deals ruin college sports?
NCAA
The NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association in the United States. They cover a range of division 1- division 3 schools across the nation. Around 1100 schools athletics are a part of the NCAA. Popular sports apart of the NCAA are football, basketball, baseball, soccer, softball, etc…
President Theodore Roosevelt founded the NCAA in the early 20th century. Roosevelt invented the NCAA to prevent injuries in college sports by making safer policies after many football players were injured or dying during games. The NCAA now covers 24 sports.
NIL Deals
NIL stands for name, image, and likeness. According to ESPN, “It refers to a person’s legal right to control how their image is used”.
Some athletes in division 1 can sports now profit from their sport because of the NIL policy. Right now, the highest-paid athlete in the NCAA is Arch Manning, a football player from the University of Texas. Manning is currently making a $6.6M profit. Along with Manning, other popular athletes make a profit off of NIL deals. Some are Livvy Dunne, Cooper Flagg, and NiJaree Canady.
As a result of all of these NIL deals, many athletes are choosing where to go to school based on the amount of money the school will pay them. Furthermore, many athletes enter the transfer portal once a school offers more money to them.
NiJaree Canady, a Stanford University softball pitcher who was named USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year, should be taken as an example. After making it to the semi-finals of the College World Series in 2024, Canady was offered $1M from Texas Tech and transferred.
Negatives of NIL Deals
Following all these NIL deals asks the question: are these deals ruining college sports?
Although young athletes are making a profit to live off, they are not fair to other college athletes who are making no profit off of their sport and working just as hard. These deals prioritize popularity over talent. They also seem to “blur the line between professional sports and college sports”.
For example, Livvy Dunne is a popular LSU gymnast and social media influencer. She currently makes $4.2M off of NIL money. Young and teenage boys view Dunne’s content online, in spite of her popularity. She brings attention to LSU gymnastics. So, is her NIL deal only because of her talent or possibly because of her online popularity?
“As a college athlete myself, I don’t like NIL deals,” Annie Reilly, a freshman softball catcher at Russell Sage College states. “I only play division 3 softball, so I would never get one myself. But, there are other division 1 players who don’t make profit compared to their teammates. So, I’m against them.”
