This is part two of what I'm calling "What in the Hell is Goin On with College Sports?" This week is about the way that student athletes can get paid while they are in college.
As with most things that change radically, it was about rectifying a previous wrong. For years and years, college athletes watched as the universities for whom they played raked in millions and millions of dollars while they got nothing. Let's say Penn State went to a Bowl Game years ago, sold thousands of Saquon Barkley calendars, raising money off of his talents and image, and Saquon got nothing. Not only that; if a sorority approached Saquon and said they wanted to raise money for, I don't know, cancer awareness by putting his photo on a calendar, Barkley would've been severely punished by the NCAA if he agreed to it. That kind of stuff happened all the time.
So, to redress that, a court decision in 2021 led to the adoption of a policy that allows student athletes to retain their eligibility while also profiting off their likenesses. It is known as NIL — name, image, likeness.
Now, NIL deals are not dependent on athletic performances, necessarily. They adhere to one thing and one thing only: the rules of capitalism. That is, you are worth what someone is willing to pay you. Therefore, the number one earner in college sports last year was Arch Manning of Texas, not because he was the best quarterback in the country, or even because he was the best quarterback at Texas, which he wasn't. But his name is Manning, and the promise of future dollars enabled him to command $6.5 million a year as a college sophomore.
And keep in mind that this is not just at big sports powerhouse schools. If WDIY, let's say, decides it wants to pay a Lehigh wrestler $5,000 to be associated with the station, it is legally okay to do so. Need I mention, by the way, that this is not happening.
It doesn't bother me very much, mainly because there are so many other areas of life where young people make what some would consider too much money — rock stars, tennis players, kids who inherit billions of dollars when they're 18.
But now things have gotten even more complicated in the college sports world. The settlement of another lawsuit now means that colleges and universities have the ability to enter these NIL agreements. They can pay for students, for example, to appear in ads or for public appearances. Each university that opts into this settlement can disperse up to $20.5 million to student athletes in the '25-'26 academic year.
There's no way this will not cause problems, and I know what you're thinking: they will probably come from jealous teammates. But I don't think that's the main thing. Most anyone who has played sports realizes it's a meritocracy. Yes, you say, ad more likely you're father says, "Hey, I'm better than that guy. I did it myself and so did my father." But deep inside, you usually know the truth. I think the main problem will be that schools will spend all their money on the major sports. Football and basketball players might get happier and richer, but men's and women's athletes in other sports — lacrosse, swimming, wrestling — may get shut out.
I know many of us want to return to the days when a scholarship was enough to pay an athlete, but those days are gone. The deal signed in March of last year between the NCAA and ESPN is for $920 million. I just hope that paying salaries to those athletes who appear in the sports we watch on television doesn't mean the end of those sports for athletes who we don't watch on television. In the college community, they should be important, too.
