Changes In NIL Deal Rules Have Turned College Sports Into Pro Sports |
Changes In NIL Deal Rules Have Turned College Sports Into Pro Sports
There’s only a minimal pretense now that a player is “true to his school” and getting a consistent education. It’s all about the money.
Will O'Toole | March 11, 2026
Arkansas announced this week that Tyson Foods is paying to have a patch on every Razorback’s uniform, with 90 percent of the money from the deal going to athlete NIL (“name, image, likeness”) deals. Arkansas is the second Power Conference school—after LSU—to announce its jersey patch sponsor since the NCAA voted in January to allow them.
How soon will the colleges and universities surrender their institutional names and be called by their sponsors instead? Will Arkansas become Tyson University, home of the Razorbacks and Chicken Wings?
College football and basketball have opened Pandora’s Box, courtesy of the NIL deals and the SCOTUS decision in NCAA v. Alston. This, in turn, has unleashed a plethora of problems for schools’ athletics. Moreover, trying to involve the government in the solution will only make things worse.
For years, colleges have operated essentially as minor leagues for professional sports, especially football and basketball, with schools having the upper hand in compensation. Most of the time, schools offered an education, room, and board in exchange for the athlete’s four years of loyalty and devotion. Athletes, of course, hoped to see their sports dreams fulfilled while pursuing a fruitful, non-athletic career in the workforce.
Because academia was meant to be about education, players were supposed to devote the majority of their attention and energy to classwork. Then, they were to reserve the rest of their time on the field. Doing so was a sacrifice and work, but it usually paid dividends. Most people would give anything to have a four-year scholarship, earn a degree, and move on into the private or public sector as an erudite college graduate, contributing to society.
Unfortunately, many athletes were compensated in more ways than just an athletic scholarship-funded education. Many schools and their donors used payoffs, cars, clothing, and other “gifts” to recruit top high school prospects.
Occasionally, institutions were caught by the NCAA, punished with severe penalties, put on probation, and held up as examples of what would happen to schools if caught red-handed with the goods, with a “Let this be a lesson to the rest of you” declaration from the NCAA bureaucracy. Maybe it put a scare in some, but the risks of getting caught did not outweigh the rewards of cheating. Cheating meant profit and prestige, and the violations were so common that, despite the consequences, they carried no stigma.
Now, of course, NIL deals to compensate players are legitimate. Payoffs are now payrolls. Transparency has liberated athletics. College athletes are now the equivalent of professional minor leaguers who can sign a deal for a year or two and then move on to another school, just as the pros move from team to team.
Image created using AI.
“Senior Day”? Laughable. More and more players move from campus to campus, conference to conference. If and when they do graduate from an institution, it is rare that they do so in four years.
Seton Hall University, which last year had the worst record in the Big East and the most losses suffered in the school’s history (7–25), transformed the team with a completely new group of players plucked from other programs, some playing at their fourth school in as many years. It’s now on the cusp of making the Big Dance, the Field of 68, the NCAA tournament, “March Madness” with a 20–11 mark. A tremendous turnaround, in part from excellent coaching but more from the benefits of NIL and the Transfer Portal, a period of time that allows players to freely move from one school to another.
Their Senior Night honored six seniors, only one of whom will be graduating after having completed four years at the South Orange, NJ, campus: senior David Gabriel.
Conversely, rival member Marquette made no “acquisitions” via transfers, and it suffered this season, remaining a low-echelon team in the league.
Even UConn, which won back-to-back NCAA titles in 2023 and 2024, has tweaked its roster with a handful of transfer players, two of whom have logged the most minutes played this season. In fact, two of the three Huskies, Tarris Reed Jr. and Silas Demary Jr., who made first team All–Big East, were transfers from other schools.
Indiana University, a perennial cupcake, the bullied kid of the Big Ten (plus 8), became the “big boy on the block” this season by enticing Fernando Mendoza off the Cal Berkeley campus to play in Bloomington. His NIL deal (reportedly $2.6 million) paid off brilliantly for the Hoosiers and the QB as he led them to their first national title, their first undefeated season, their first conference championship in decades, and a Heisman Trophy Award, the first in the school’s history, and potentially the number one pick in the NFL Draft.
Despite a cap on NIL deals, schools and conferences put their attorneys and accountants to work, seeking loopholes and ways to skirt the cap to gain a competitive edge.
But anyone who thinks revenue sharing, player caps, or budget allotments will solve the issue is having another Norman Rockwell moment.
Chaos will continue because schools know they have created a monster. Big-time sports are big business, and administrations feel pressure from alumni, fans, coaches, players, and the media, particularly linear television, as more eyes and ears gravitate to streaming and other technologies.
The promise of NextGen TV and emergent pay TV packages shows promise in helping broadcasters reverse the trend.
Worse, anyone who really thinks the government can solve the issue doesn’t understand the “swamp” mentality of government programs. Bureaucrats’ insights become government oversights costing the taxpayer heaps.
When one realizes that the NCAA is an inert, inept, impotent, and incapable bureaucracy and that college sports aren’t just corrupt, but corrupt absolutely—that they have been, are, and always will be corrupt—will anything get done?
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