Overlooked NIL Realities

Quick to call it the "wild, wild west," many ignore truths about NIL.

Nico Iamaleava, the former Tennessee quarterback, has officially transferred to UCLA. His departure followed a dispute over his NIL deal, where his representatives sought to increase his annual compensation. Tensions escalated when he missed practices and team meetings in mid-April.

There are several realities people ignore when broadly judging the NIL industry. Here are a few.

Ignoring personal accountability

Everyone claims money is ruining college athletics now that NIL is permissible. That viewpoint is ignorant and far too basic. Just because a school offers you a ton of money doesn't mean that's where you need to go.

College recruitment has always required personal accountability. If your official visit looks like Jesus Shuttlesworth's in He Got Game, it's possible you may end up at the school for the wrong reasons.

Money is not ruining the game. The people deciding to take the money, or the entourage encouraging a player to take it, are ruining the player.

NIL might also be revealing inconvenient truths about the relative lack of coaching ability of some coaches who lean too heavily on money and stature in recruiting. When a good coach has adequate resources and a level playing field, someone like Todd Golden wins a national championship.

In-kind trade NIL

The most classic form of NIL is in-kind trade: an athlete gives an endorsement or autograph in exchange for free goods or services. Ohio State football players did this two decades ago, and it cost Jim Tressel his job. Harmless, fair-market-value trades — but rules are rules, even when absurdly wrong, so punishments followed.

Free tanning, free sandwiches, free protein powder, free yoga, free smoothies — all can be received in exchange for a social post, a picture, or an autograph. Many of these deals aren't lopsided; they benefit both parties with little to no downside.

The complicity of the NCAA

The NCAA could easily enforce rules to structure the NIL industry. Something as simple as a certified-advisor requirement, registration, or a preferred banking and financial-literacy partner could create real benefits for an industry facilitating over $1 billion in yearly payments.

But the NCAA is intentionally letting NIL appear massively unregulated. The more lawless it looks, the more justified the involvement of politicians becomes — which hopefully, for the NCAA, leads to an antitrust exemption.

The NCAA has gone to great lengths to restrict opportunities for athletes. They are an enforcement organization masquerading as a management organization. You don't need to look hard to find the double standards between the sports that print revenue and the ones that don't. I'm heaping a bulk of the blame on the NCAA for the current state of affairs.

Each NIL contract and situation is unique. The NIL era is less than four years old, so there will continue to be maturation. I've been in NIL since day one, and I have seen immense progress in a relatively short time.

And there's more progress to come.