At 26 years old, armed with years of medical records and the Covid pandemic, tight end Cam McCormick was approved for an unprecedented ninth year of college football eligibility by the NCAA. Nearly 8 years older than his comrades, McCormick stepped onto the football field with his 18-year-old teammates. What would have been a circumstance unimaginable a decade ago is illustrative of a mutated collegiate athletics landscape that money, legal struggles and greed have turned upside down.
A decade ago, NCAA athletics was founded on the idea of the “student athlete.” Athletes were seen as pupils who just happened to participate in sports. Athletes received scholarships, meals and housing, but no direct compensation. “Student” came first; “athlete” second.
The most significant disruptor in this reorientation was a series of lawsuits. In 2009, former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon noticed his likeness was being used in an EA Sports college basketball video game without his permission and argued that the NCAA was profiting without his benefit. In 2014, the O’Bannon case was ruled in his favor. This case cracked the foundations of the NCAA’s amateurism model and paved the way for cases like Alston vs. NCAA (2021) and House vs. NCAA (2025) to open the floodgates for player pay and profiteering enterprises.
Today, universities are allowed to directly share revenue with student athletes. As a result, according to the NCAA, the average Division I basketball player in 2024 made $65,853. In college football, 18-year-old quarterback Bryce Underwood signed a NIL deal with the University of Michigan that is worth more than $10.5 million. In less than a decade of change, student-athletes can now make more revenue than many employed adults.
These capitalistic forces push student athletes into a position of professionalism and celebrity-like status. College students are now discussed across the country at the family dinner table and are required to establish and maintain a brand in the digital world. Additionally, these same teenagers are offered six-figure endorsement deals from companies like Nike, Red Bull and PetSmart. This marks a clear shift in orientation from student and amateur to athlete and professional.
The monetary incentives have also drastically shifted the continuity of team construction. Since athletes are chasing money, players are now entering the transfer portal (the mechanism for switching colleges for athletics) almost every year to maximize their earnings. Rule changes now allow for unlimited transfers for each athlete without the need to sit out a year upon transfer. Startlingly, according to Yahoo Sports, 45% of college basketball players declared for the transfer portal after the 2025-26 season. Especially in a small roster sport like basketball, it is very common for the whole team to transfer out and the university must assemble a completely new team for the following season.
The previous process for creating a team roster was slow and based on development. It was very common for coaches to recruit raw athletes and gradually develop them into stars over their time at college. Recruiting and conferences were based on proximity, rather than having conferences constructed to optimize television market coverage for a broad reach across the country. Today, there is a lack of continuity in rosters, a lack of incentives to recruit and develop student athletes, and bizarre conference configurations, most noticeably demonstrated in the Big Ten which pairs schools like UCLA and the University of Washington with schools with little in common like the University of Iowa and Rutgers.
To generate revenue, the NCAA created loopholes in order to keep athletes in the system. In August 2022, the NCAA essentially allowed certain players to gain an extra year of eligibility if they had the correct medical waivers and documents. For example, if a player got injured and missed the whole season, they would typically gain an extra year of eligibility. More time in the system equates to more revenue for the schools, the NCAA and established players.
No one at age 26 should be allowed to play college sports regardless of the situation. Imagine what message the NCAA is sending: rather than matriculating from college, getting a job and starting a life, athletes should keep playing college sports for far longer than ever previously imaginable. 26-year-olds also take away opportunities from the younger athletes to make teams, have an impact and develop.
A skeptic might ask: Why is it bad that college sports are moving towards a more professional environment? In response to this, I would mention the many unique characteristics of college sports that separate it from the professional leagues: Playing for the love of the game rather than the paycheck, playing for tradition while getting a valuable college education and much more. The collegiate world of yesteryear offered these differentiators that produced a pure athletic environment.
All changes in college sports in the last decade are geared towards one thing: making more money. The players want to maximize their profits from endorsement deals and payments directly from the universities. These institutions want to enhance television and media deals, expand schedules for profitable sports (football and basketball) and drop programs that are not revenue-generating (like swimming, wrestling, and track). The NCAA is currently the feckless leader of the beloved American fixture of collegiate athletics.
