NIL: name, image, and likeness. These three letters have wreaked havoc on the system of college sports as we know it, creating an unprecedented opportunity for athletes to make money for themselves, set in motion because of a law in California. It has opened new doors to gender inequality and outrageous spending.
In 2019 California Governor Gavin Newsom passed the “Fair Pay to Play Act,” A law designed to let college athletes in the state of California profit off their name, image, or likeness starting in 2021. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and New Mexico passed similar laws in quick succession. In addition, in 2021, right before the start of these new acts, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case NCAA v. Alston, upholding the right for student-athletes to make money off of their NIL. This decision puts pressure on the NCAA to set basic guidelines regarding NIL and address the new laws created by the three states.
Nine days after the Supreme Court ruling and the eve of the July 1, 2021 deadline that put the state laws into practice, the NCAA released its Interim NIL Policy. It outlined basic guidelines about the illegal use of money as recruiting incentives and created a policy for athletes in states that didn’t have regulations regarding NIL. This policy changed the entire college landscape in one night.
It was late June 2022 and Jaden Rashada was excited. He had just committed to the University of Miami with a 9.1 million dollar NIL deal from a Miami booster club. Heading into the prestigious Elite 11 quarterback camp, all he could think about was the pressure of such high expectations. It is safe to say that the pressure got to him. He proceeded to perform terribly during the drills that week. During the finale of the camp, an Athletic reporter caught him in tears. Yet, four months later, he decommitted from Miami and flipped to the University of Florida for a record $13.85 million deal spread out over four years, $3 million less than Patrick Mahomes’ 2017 rookie contract. This money, to be paid out by a Florida booster club, was expected to include a $500,000 signing bonus.
Then, two days before his bonus was due, the booster club pulled out of the agreement and Rashada was released from his commitment. Rashada committed to Arizona State University a month later. Since then, he’s transferred three times before his sophomore year of college. Unfortunately, stories like these have become commonplace in the new world of college sports. Take Matthew Sluka, a graduate transfer from Holy Cross who committed to the University of Nevada Las Vegas to play football this past year and ended up sitting out a season because he didn’t receive his promised $100,000 NIL payment. This resulted in him transferring to play for JMU next season. Volatile stories like these show how unpredictable NIL can be.
Adrian Wojnarowski is known for breaking important news in the NBA. Still, he surprised everyone with his decision to leave his job and take a significant pay cut to act as a “General Manager” for the St. Bonaventure basketball team in New York. Wojnarowski took this role to help St. Bonaventure stay competitive in the world of NIL recruiting. His goal is to make sure that St. Bonaventure, his alma mater, can keep recruiting transfers and commits despite bigger schools being able to pay them larger sums of money. In 2022, three years before he took the job, the Bonnies reached the semi-finals of the postseason National Invitation Tournament. Things looked up the next year as the team returned four of its five starters. All four of them were persuaded to leave by bigger schools that gave them big NIL payments. With St. Bonaventure, a school of 2,000 students, not able to match these offers, all four left.
NIL has had dramatic impacts on Title IX, the statute making women’s and men’s sports equal. On ON3’s top 100 highest NIL evaluation list only three female athletes are on the entire list. Something has to be done with the lack of female participation in NIL. This disproportionate pay gap pressured the NCAA and the government to create more regulations. A memo passed by the Department of Education early this year attempted to solve this problem by calling disproportionate payments to men and women a Title IX infringement. However, with a new presidential administration, there is talk that this memo could be rescinded or challenged in court. A case can be made for the difference in generated revenue by men’s and women’s collegiate sports respectively, but cutting one of them out entirely doesn’t work. A federal antitrust case between Arizona State swimmer Grant House and Texas Christian University swimmer Sedona Prince and the NCAA reached a $2.8 billion dollar settlement for the NCAA to pay out to schools. The settlement allows schools to divvy up to $20.5 million dollars a year from Athletic Revenue to athletes, but it is uncertain if female and male athletes will split it equally. Already schools like Texas Tech have given higher payments out to men’s sports than women’s sports. However, this ruling effectively ends the astronomical large sums of money paid out by universities every year and creates a cap spending limit which makes it easier for smaller schools to compete.
NIL has allowed athletes to profit from themselves and help pay off the immense sacrifice it takes to play a college sport. Paying a pro-contract worth of money to students is not acceptable. The arms race between bigger schools leaves smaller schools in the dust. This is why the institution of revenue sharing is so vital to the survival of college sports. The sexism in NIL spending makes it hard for schools to continue to uphold Title IX. A simple clause to equal out a portion of NIL revenue sharing each year relative to their generated revenue would help curb this discrimination.
