In a previous thread on here, some speculated about a future in college football where players are no longer required to students, which seems to be an inevitability at this point.
That leads me to wonder about player eligibility limits, which are on the verge of being all but meaningless anyway with players having college careers approaching a decade. And if players are eventually no longer required to be students, I don't see how there could be eligibility requirements. However, I wonder if in certain situations, players who are very good college players but fringe NFL players will just stay and keep on playing with solid NIL deals.
There are tons of players who are very, very good college players but don't translate to the NFL for on reason or another. Players like this, in today's market, could have 7-figure NIL deals. For players like that, do you just stay in college and keep playing as opposed to having to try to crack into the NFL as a UDFA?
The risk of course, is that it would hurt recruiting if you had a player like a QB who was entrenched. But if you a known entity at QB who is very good, do you just go the NFL route and recruit back-up caliber QBs until the other player is ready to move on? It would be a major dynamic shift in college football, but there have been many of those already. If you had, for instance, a proven winner and competitor in Connor Shaw, who was a fringe NFL talent, do you just stick with a player who know will win games instead of rolling the dice on a new recruit? As a player, you can just stick around a few years more, make a million or so a year, which is better than you'd get as a late-round draft pick or UDFA.
That leads me to wonder about player eligibility limits, which are on the verge of being all but meaningless anyway with players having college careers approaching a decade. And if players are eventually no longer required to be students, I don't see how there could be eligibility requirements. However, I wonder if in certain situations, players who are very good college players but fringe NFL players will just stay and keep on playing with solid NIL deals.
There are tons of players who are very, very good college players but don't translate to the NFL for on reason or another. Players like this, in today's market, could have 7-figure NIL deals. For players like that, do you just stay in college and keep playing as opposed to having to try to crack into the NFL as a UDFA?
The risk of course, is that it would hurt recruiting if you had a player like a QB who was entrenched. But if you a known entity at QB who is very good, do you just go the NFL route and recruit back-up caliber QBs until the other player is ready to move on? It would be a major dynamic shift in college football, but there have been many of those already. If you had, for instance, a proven winner and competitor in Connor Shaw, who was a fringe NFL talent, do you just stick with a player who know will win games instead of rolling the dice on a new recruit? As a player, you can just stick around a few years more, make a million or so a year, which is better than you'd get as a late-round draft pick or UDFA.
