NIL? Good. Portal? Good. Together? Bad

On3 imageby:Eric Nahlin05/03/22

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

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Fortunately for college football fans, the NCAA is on that road, not college football itself.

Individually, Name, Image, and Likeness and the freedom of movement inherent to the portal makes a lot of sense. But when combined, you get the current climate of rampant tampering that threatens to further bifurcate the sport and turn it into the NFL. In defense of the NFL, at least they take tampering seriously.

Given the NCAA’s inability to police bad actors, it’s on the verge of losing control of the sport. Tampering has always existed, of course, but because of the new incentive structures it is happening far more frequently, and blatantly, than ever.

We have seen a drastic overcorrection in which leverage was ripped from the institution and placed directly in the hands of the players, but much worse than that, in the hands of agents (Eric Silver excluded).

I am all for NIL. It’s plainly simple to me that nobody should care what one person wants to pay another for a good or service. It’s much better than the alternatives: traditional compensation of scholarships, tuition, books, etc, and pretending it was economically realistic the schools themselves could pay players, especially with Title IX still a federal law.

Absent stronger enforcement of tampering, which is highly unlikely to occur, it seems the way to tackle this current issue is on the eligibility side. Incentives have to be altered. If post-transfer eligibility went back to the old way of players having to sit out a year, the value of most players would take a drastic hit. It would also address the problem of too many players entering the portal after receiving poor advice and overestimating their demand (The people who allege to care about players first and foremost never seem to mention those who significantly downgrade their education).

No matter what route the NCAA takes it will be a short-lived resolution. Re-alignment will bring with it a radical shift in the college landscape and the NCAA is likely to fall through the cracks, at least as it pertains to football. After that mushroom cloud settles, the leading conferences will come up with new rules and a new body to enforce them. You’re probably thinking, ‘great, just what we need, Alabama, Georgia, et al., deciding what is and isn’t permissible.’ That’s my first thought, but Texas, Michigan, Notre Dame and others also have a seat at the table. With proper guard rails, NIL is actually good for competition, you can tell because Nick Saban hates it.

It will be incumbent that Texas leadership takes a lead role in the transition to the new modern era of college football that is heading our way in the next few years. Between now and then it will be a bumpy ride but eventually things will be ironed out because the current trajectory is not sustainable and college football means too much, both financially and culturally.

Corrections happen all the time, ask Cathie Wood.

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