Quarterback Arch Manning, nephew of former professional football players Eli and Peyton Manning, is valued at $6.5 million. But he plays for the University of Texas at Austin, not the Dallas Cowboys. Multi-million-dollar Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals undermine long-held traditions, team spirit and athletes’ wellbeing, as they remake themselves in the image of professional athletes.
Proponents of NIL deals argue that they give student athletes more leverage to profit from their brand. However, this leverage has hurt the brand of college sports writ large.
College sports are captivating for spectators because they know players are playing for their team, school and love of the game, not self-aggrandizement and personal profit. NIL deals chip away at the school spirit that makes college sports special. Allowing athletes to sign sponsorship deals means that players care more about promoting their personal brand than about school spirit.
Before 2021, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes were prohibited from making NIL deals. That year, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA rules on “non-cash education-related benefits” violated federal antitrust legislation. Yet, they still maintained that measures to preserve the “revered tradition of amateurism” were legal but potentially subject to legal challenges, opening up the Pandora’s Box of NIL money without even mentioning it.
This ruling unintentionally manufactured another type of monopoly. NCAA rules still prohibit universities from directly paying athletes. But with the advent of college NIL deals, alumni sports booster clubs have created slush funds to attract athletes to play for their alma maters by offering to pay them more money.
College sports are not known for their parity, but this will only further exacerbate disparities between different university sports programs, big and small, possibly leading to a decrease in competitiveness.
In years past, Division One recruiters would try to lure athletes to join with good team culture, campus life and, at most, scholarships. Now, schools with big donors are outmaneuvering those who pay less, further harming college sports by making it eerily like professional sports.
On top of this, the transfer portal has exacerbated the NIL crisis. The portal has allowed student athletes to make it publicly known that they wish to transfer, rather than a private, mainly educational matter. Coupled with NIL, the portal has opened a system where teams offer larger NIL deals to athletes to lure them to their university. This violates NCAA rules, but the rules are never enforced.
This added monetary incentive adds pressure on student athletes, pushing them to increasingly worry about their game performance to keep their brand deals, not just to impress peers and their school. College athletes have already been noted to have more mental health challenges than nonathletes, and this added stress is bound to worsen it.
Just imagine the pressure about potentially squandering $6.5 million, as Arch Manning – the highest-paid college athlete – faces. Or the $4.8 million tied to Duke basketball forward Cooper Flagg. Or the $4.1 million earned by LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne. They are not alone. Many other athletes make six to seven figures.
College is supposed to be a stepping stone for college athletes in their professional and athletic careers. However, the flooding of millions of dollars into college sports has blurred the lines between professional and collegiate sports.
Student athletes are supposed to be students first, but giving teenagers fresh out of high school large sums of money creates unrealistic expectations about life. This is not only unnatural, but it also gives student athletes less of an incentive to succeed in school since they have a guaranteed income before their freshman year.
The controversy has even made it all the way to the White House, as President Donald Trump mulls an executive order addressing NIL deals after meeting with former University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Although there are questions whether the government can actually fix it, something must be done somewhere to preserve the integrity of college sports for spectators, athletes, universities and, above all, love for the game.
