The original NIL idea was pitched as giving these poor college players a chance to make money (be in ads, get a cut of jersey sales, etc) but that pay to play was not allowed. That seemed very reasonable. A guy like Jimmer could have made millions on endorsements his senior year if it were allowed, and it was weird that he couldn’t even sell T-shirts or make money from appearances.

But, this is out of control. Right now schools are essentially paying players. They’re not writing the checks directly but it seems like they say something like, “If you come here, we will arrange $(insert amount) for you from our boosters”. Does anyone know if these are wink, wink type deals or if anything is actually in writing?

It also looks like there is a ton of tampering going on. There are constant rumors of players getting a lot of interest or even offers when they haven’t even entered the portal (Retzlaff, Snowden, and many others). How is this happening?

I’m not seeing players in ads, at least not that many. Sure, you have some AJ Dybansta types with endorsement deals, but I’d bet that the boosters and their companies aren’t getting much actual value out of this. There’s no way that paying the Right Guard a bunch of money is giving them any ROI at all.

I don’t think this can be fixed until there is a salary cap, year sit out for transferring or actual multi-year contracts that would keep a player at a school. I highly doubt that boosters will continue to be willing to fork over big money for rentals and then have to enter into a bidding war every offseason to convince their good players to stay. If you’re a player why wouldn’t you enter the portal every year to get a raise?