NIL: Now it's legal, whatever happens next and other stories

“Your cheatin’ heart will make you weep, you’ll cry and cry and try to sleep” – from “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams

NIL. Supposedly that stands for name, image and likeness, a fancy way to say student-athletes – and since they’re now able to get paid, let’s use that term loosely – can make a pile of money doing the kind of things that gave Southern Methodist University the NCAA equivalent of the electric chair.

SMU was what could only be described as a serial cheater, getting slapped with probation five times between 1974 and 1985 before the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, dealt its harshest punishment, the death penalty. That is the last time the NCAA has gone that far although it considered it with Florida in 1984, Kentucky basketball in 1989, Alabama football in 2000 and a couple other times.

What put those schools in the NCAA jailhouse is Romper Room compared to what’s going on now. Now we have NIL, legal since the Supremes did a 9-0 highest court in the country tapdance on the NCAA in something called Alston v. the NCAA. After its most humiliating defeat ever – in the case of the NCAA there have been many humiliating defeats in court – the NCAA threw up its hands and basically said, “You’re on your own,” to its member schools.

NIL. Now It’s Legal. Student-athletes – an oxymoron if ever there was one in today’s anything goes culture created in protest of the NCAA – can sell themselves to the highest bidder. They can hire agents to work out the details.

We have pay for play, or what former Florida and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer would call organized cheating.

Appearing on the Lou Holtz Podcast, here are excerpts of what Urban had to say about NIL and the state of college athletics:

 “If you’re a woman basketball player like the great girl from Iowa and they want to put her on a billboard and pay her, they should be able to do that, but that’s not what happened. What’s happened is the arms race of collecting money from donors and the donors are simply paying players. That’s what I understand and I don’t like it.”

“I think NIL, and I sat in those committees for many, many years, I think it’s great. I think if it’s capitalism, for example, if a great player like Marvin Harrison Jr. and some car dealership in town wants to hire him, they want to put his name on a billboard and pay him money, sign autographs, he wants to put something on an Instagram or they sell that. But that’s not what’s happened, coach. What’s happened is it’s cheating."

“…but to have a 17-year-old demand money for a visit, to pay these players a lot of money to go visit a charity for 20 minutes and they write you a check for $50,000, that's cheating. That's not what this is all about. I'm very disappointed in where it went."

“Nothin’ you can’t handle, nothin’ you ain’t got. Put your money on the table and drive it off the lot” – from “Low Down” by Boz Scaggs

When Graham Mertz announced he was coming back for one more season of football at the University of Florida, he said it was about “unfinished business.” That’s true, but so is the fact that he resuscitated his college football career a season ago and he definitely needs to build on what he did last year to ensure he’ll have a chance to be drafted by the NFL in 2025. It is also true that Billy Napier needed Mertz so save stud recruit DJ Lagway from all the problems associated with true freshmen playing quarterback in the Southeastern Conference.

Mertz needed another successful year to impress the NFL. Lagway needed an aging vat year so that he will be as well prepared as possible to take over as the starting QB in 2025. Napier can’t afford a third straight losing season so he definitely needed his experienced starter to come back to (a) win games and (b) mentor Lagway.

For that, it takes NIL money. Unsubstantiated rumors have Mertz and Lagway both getting anywhere from $1-to-$1.5 million for 2024 with Lagway’s money escalating to $2 million and beyond starting in 2025. Quarterbacks aren’t cheap.

Counting former 5-star corner Cormani McClain, who committed to Florida Wednesday after spending his freshman year at Colorado, Napier has brought in 17 players through the portal. He signed a freshman class of 21. Since there is no such thing as free lunch anymore in college sports, particularly football, you have to figure all 38 got money to come to the University of Florida.

A couple of years ago Napier offered a figure of $20 million per year what it would take for Florida to compete with the likes of Georgia and Alabama for talent capable of winning big in the Southeastern Conference. Figure inflation is higher when it comes to college football than it is in the real world but conservatively 10 percent yearly, which would mean right now Florida needs something like $25 million. A year.  

“It’s really hot and a little bit sour, we’re getting your strength to maximum power” – from “The Golden Age” by Asteroids Galaxy Tour

A year ago, Todd Golden found just the right mix in transfers Walter Clayton Jr. (from Iona), Tyrese Samuel (from Seton Hall), Zyon Pullin (from Cal-Riverside) and Micah Handlogten (from Marshall). He brought in a pair of impactful freshmen in Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh. Samuel and Pullin have run out of eligibility and Riley Kugel, who commanded a hefty NIL deal, is in the portal. The replacements for the gone Gators are Sam Alexis (from Chattanooga), Rueben Chinyelu (from Washington State) and Alijah Martin (from Florida Atlantic) plus freshman Isaiah Brown. Golden still has two scholarships to give.

More so than football, basketball is going to rely heavily on the transfer portal for teams to be competitive enough to be in both conference and national championship hunts. As UConn has proven in the last two years, you have to have the right mix of transfers and home growns to win big.

That’s Todd Golden’s formula for the future. Whenever he discusses recruiting it’s always in the context of a mix between freshmen and transfers. Freshmen can be developed and transfers bring experience. They both cost money.

Clayton and Will Richard are testing the NBA waters. Clayton was invited to the G-League combine. His measurements including a 37.5-inch vertical were impressive, and he will probably be offered a G-League contract. G-League salaries are less than $50,000 per year. Clayton and Richard both made more money than that in NIL last year. Both will be back.

“Papa say, ‘Oh, no hesitation; no tears and no hearts breakin' no remorse. Oh congratulations, this is your Haitian divorce” – from “Haitian Divorce” by Steely Dan

A few weeks ago, John Calipari had a come to Jesus chat with University of Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart. Cal wanted a hug and some love. Mitch couldn’t afford to fire him because he didn’t have a zillion or so dollars of buyout money. He basically told Cal he could stay at UK, but no reassuring hug was offered.

In one of those quicker than poop through a goose moments, John Calipari got his divorce from Kentucky and resurfaced as the head coach at Arkansas. If the divorce was Haiti, the marriage was pure Las Vegas with John Tyson, of the Tyson Chicken Tysons, doing a fabulous Elvis impersonation. Tyson and his fellow gozillionaire boosters who love getting in bidding wars to have University of Arkansas athletic facilities named after them, got Cal to sign on a 5-year dotted line, lured by $5 million NIL whipout money to hire a roster talented enough to lead the Razorbacks out of a 30-year desert and into the NCAA basketball promised land.

The deal came with the assurance that if $5 million wasn’t enough, there was plenty more where that came from. You can do that when you have boosters named Walton (Walmart), Reynolds (aluminum), Stevens (investment banking), Jones (oil and the Dallas Cowboys), and of course, Tyson (chicken).

Cal has responded by luring to Arkansas four transfers from the portal and three freshmen who were released from their Kentucky letters of intent. That’s only seven players, eight counting the one who didn’t transfer out of Arkansas when Eric Musselman bolted for Southern Cal. John Calipari has the money he needs to buy five more players.

It is a shot across the bow of the Southeastern Conference and all the top schools nationwide that says you better have a ton of money if you expect to compete for the best players whether they’re freshmen or transfers in the portal.

“He got an agent and a roadie named Bart, they made a record and it went in the charts, the sky was the limit” – from “The Great Wide Open” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Tennessee boosters believe the sky is the limit for Vol football with Nico Iamaleava throwing passes. He is the latest in a long line of “the next Peyton Manning” quarterbacks at UT. He’s supposed to lead the Vols out of a 26-year desert into the promised land.

Funny, but Peyton never won a national championship nor did he win the Heisman Trophy. Now, Tee Martin won a national championship the year after Peyton graduated, but he didn’t win the Heisman either.

There was a standing joke for years that went like this: Where was OJ Simpson heading when he was driving the white Bronco? To Knoxville because you’ll never find a Heisman Trophy winner there.

There has never been a Heisman Trophy winner at Tennessee although there have been three runners-up: Manning (1997), Johnny Majors (1957) and Hank Lauricella (1951). Tennessee booster must think Iamaleava can win the Heisman because they put together an $8 million deal when he was in high school.

Nico was Captain Clipboard as a freshman at Tennessee in 2023, but when the Vols went to something called the Cheez-It Bowl he got the start. Completing 12-19 passes for 151 yards and a TD, Nico has Vol fans salivating, believing this one will actually live up to the hype.

But what if he doesn’t?

“I want to go home to the armadillos, good country music from Amarillo down to Abilene, the friendliest people and the prettiest women you’ve ever seen” – from “London Homesick Blues” written by Gary P. Nunn, made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker

Because he couldn’t get NIL money as a high school senior in Texas, Quinn Ewers skipped his senior season at South Lake Carroll and went to Ohio State, joining the Buckeyes with preseason camp in progress in August of 2021. The Buckeyes already had CJ Stroud, who would throw for 4,435 yards and 44 touchdowns. With Stroud returning for 2022, Ewers decided to go home to the armadillos and the Texas Longhorns.  

There is this old saying in Texas that only God has more money than the Longhorns. Ewers got money in 2022 when the Longhorns went 8-5. He was decent but unspectacular. He cut off his mullet in the offseason and in 2023 led Texas to its first berth in the College Football Playoff where the Longhorns were edged by Washington 27-20.

Ewers could have gone to the NFL after last season but he most likely would have been taken in the second or third rounds. So, he would have taken a pay cut to go pro since his NIL deals at Texas are worth somewhere between $1.9 and $4 million.  

So split the difference. If the Longhorns are paying Quinn Ewers just shy of $3 million, what are they paying the rest of the roster? There are 84 other scholarship athletes, some are stars and some freshmen who didn’t get a loaded deal when they signed. If it averages $150,000 per scholarship football player, that’s $12.6 million. We haven’t even added in the other sports. NIL might cost Texas $25 million a year and that doesn’t include all the money that goes into scholarships, insurance, etc.  

“We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do” – from “We Gotta Get Outta This Place” by Eric Burden and The Animals

Tom Fornelli, who writes about college football for CBS Sports, paints a rather grim picture when it comes to the Atlantic Coast Conference. He believes that it’s only a matter of when not if Florida State and Clemson leave the ACC and it’s all about the high cost of doing business.

While FSU and Clemson’s Southeastern Conference brethren are going to be raking in something along the lines of $100 million a year by 2026, FSU and Clemson will be getting half that from the ACC. Both of them want to be competitive on the national stage and they can’t see that happening if they have the monetary handicap from the media money.

The media money is only half the problem. While trying to keep up with the SEC Joneses, they also have to have the NIL cash on hand to lure transfers and sign outstanding freshmen. They are more or less holding their own with the freshmen right now. Clemson doesn’t go after transfers but it’s going to take a boatload of cash to sign top freshmen and then keep them happy. FSU regularly dips in the portal but how long will the Seminoles be able to compete for the best players when every SEC school has $50 million more in media money, which frees up booster money for the portal?

Clemson and FSU think the solution is to pack up their bags and leave the ACC, except there is that teensy matter of grant of rights, which is in effect until 2036. FSU estimates that leaving the ACC would cost $500 million, so it has sued, figuring there must be a loophole which will be their emancipation proclamation. Clemson has also sued. The ACC, meanwhile, has counter-sued and vows to tie matters up in court for years.

FSU and Clemson are counting on two things to save them. First, they expect a settlement with a suit brought on by the Congress to mean something like $17-20 million a year to settle possible anti-trust violations with the NCAA. That’s money in the pockets of FSU and Clemson. Only problem is, all the schools in the SEC and Big Ten will also get the same amount. The other thing they count on is that either the SEC or Big Ten will scoop them up soon as they are free and clear of the ACC.

The only problem with that theory is that neither the SEC nor the ACC are in much of an expansion mood. Greg Sankey is quite content at 16 teams with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma this year. From a scheduling and brand perspective, the SEC has gotten so much stronger with Texas and Oklahoma. The Big Ten is going to have to sort out transportation issues since it is now a coast-to-coast league and that’s just for starters. Would Clemson and FSU add any real value to the league? Not really.

It is understandable that FSU and Clemson feel a need for more money, but both had opportunities to join the SEC in the past. They chose the ACC instead, a move they will regret in the future when the cost of doing business involves more money than they have to spend on NIL.

“Come gather ‘round people people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown; and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving” – from “The Times They Are-a Changin’” by Bob Dylan

Back in the 1970s former Duke point guard Dick Devenzio became an advocate for college athletes. He believed they should be paid, be able to unionize and have long term health care and educational benefits well past their playing days. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, tried to pass him off as a kook. Had the NCAA listened back then and given in on some of the demands that began filtering in, many of the issues that threaten the very foundation of the organization could have been averted.

By fighting as hard and as long as it did to maintain its outdated scholarship/amateur model, the NCAA tossed gasoline on a brush fire. The brush fire has spread and is out of control now. Charlie Baker, who has replaced Mark Emmert as the president of the NCAA, thinks Congress has the answers and many of the academics who preside over the institutions that make up the NCAA are in favor of government intervention.

Is that the answer? Or should the free market decide?

The schools that can afford it will pay the players. Some schools will try to stay competitive but the rising costs of fielding teams might make some athletic departments go belly up. Others may choose to eliminate scholarships altogether and go with an Ivy League or Division III approach.

Players are going to be paid and some schools won’t be able to afford the rising costs of fielding teams. We may see some athletic departments go belly up whether by bankruptcy or the school electing to go with a non-scholarship, Division III-like program.

The times are changing and who knows what we’re going to wind up with. Congress is going to get involved and that’s scary. Players going on strike? Possible. Scarier still. Schools with a hundred year history having to declare bankruptcy or put an end of their athletic departments? It could happen.

So buckle your seatbelts. The ride promises to be rocky.