The Destruction of College Athletics is Upon us

By Gavin McNeal

April 28, 2025

The solution is now the problem: NIL (Name Image and Likeness) is taking over college sports as we know it.  

NIL is the right for high school and college athletes to make money off of their name. It also offers them the opportunity to participate in deals with brands and other endorsements. As a result, many college and high school athletes are now in commercials.  

College athletics was once for amateurs, but can we really call it that anymore when some of the athletes are getting paid millions of dollars based on their name. We have come to a world where backup quarterbacks make millions of dollars. According to Business Insider, Arch Manning from the University of Texas made $6.5 million last season when he barely played and sat behind the starter Quinn Ewers. Being able to sit on the bench for most of the year and make that amount of money is insane. It comes down to popularity and not about performance. 

Now, it’s definitely not the fault of the athletes for capitalizing the opportunity that they have. The NCAA made the choice to start this madness of extremely loose restrictions regarding the college players getting paid after bringing in revenue for their respective schools from their team's performance and popularity.

The leaders of the NCAA thought it would be best to make it legal. When they did this on July 1st, 2021 they had the intention of it being a great thing but it has turned into the wild west of money circulation. 

The issues that NIL have caused have been overwhelming. Just last week the University of Tennessee’s quarterback Nico Iamaleava and his representatives thought that he should be making more money from NIL during this season next fall based on his potential. He decided the best way to negotiate this was to participate in a “hold out” (purposefully missing spring practices and meetings). Tennessee held their ground and he went into the transfer portal which allows athletes to move schools if they want to. The consequences of his actions was now that he had to transfer.  If he had just stayed at Tennessee and not done anything he would be making $2 million. But now at UCLA he will be making 1.5 million dollars. This new ability for players to make decisions based on money leads them down the wrong path. 

There is now, more than ever, a bigger gap between the big schools and the smaller ones in college sports. All four number one seeds in this year’s March Madness made it into the final four which had only happened one time before in 2008. In addition to that there was overall an unusual top seed dominance during the tournament, which prides itself on the amount of upsets. The bigger name schools like Ohio State, the University of Texas and the University of Florida are a few examples of many schools that have tons of money to spend on NIL deals. While schools in smaller conferences like the Sun Belt Conference, the Mountain West and the Big Sky to name a few, don’t have the amount of resources to compete.  

These athletes are still students and most of them aren’t ready to make these important decisions. They are put under a lot of pressure when it comes to obtaining these NIL deals and making sure they get the value they feel like they deserve. When they should be focused more on their performance and school. This unnecessary distraction leads a lot of student athletes down the wrong path. 

There may be a path for college athletes to get paid fairly but that idea seems far fetched at the moment. The softness of the restrictions there are currently is mind boggling. The schools should be less involved with the NIL negotiations so bigger schools that have more resources can't flex their power over smaller schools. College athletics has never been about money; it’s always been for these athletes to hone their skills and playing for the love of the game. NIL will be the death of that if it is not changed.