The Story of the Football Players, in What is Known as the Realms of NIL, of the Amateur/Professional War Storm Caused by the NCAA Rebellion
With the tact and deftness of superfan funeral attendees, the NCAA has birthed unto this world a new era of college football. Athletes will boldly go where no one has gone before except everybody else who trades services for money. Clandestine exchanges once reserved for the parking lots of Knoxville fast food establishments are now set to become the centerpieces of recruiting power points. I used to write quite a bit, but it’s been awhile, prepare yourselves for Will’s Soapbox.
Norman, Oklahoma. The scent of barbeque fills the air. The future coach of the Dallas Cowboys is droning on about something or other. All afternoon he’s been lamenting the fact that Oklahoma has to play all THREE phases of football and not just offense and special teams. You are barely 18 years old. You stand at an impressive 6’3”. You weigh 200 pounds. You run a 4.40 second 40, laser timed. You’ve never dropped a ball. Your hands ooze pine tar. You’ve just lead your highschool team to it’s best record in 40 years, setting receiving records along the way. Tom Loy thinks you’re going to Notre Dame and Lincoln Riley has just offered you a full scholarship to play at Oklahoma. THERE ARE FERRARIS IN THE FREAKING ENDZONE.
This is good news. All the important schools have offered you now. Its time to go home, sit down, and talk with your family about which college town’s used car dealerships will offer you the most money to cut a 30 second ad about how much you love their financing options. A week ago in Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan talked about their prestigious academic programs. I’ve always wanted to major in General Studies. Growing up, Dad told everybody who would listen “my boy is smart, he’s really got a knack for “stuff”, he only has to study a little bit and he’d get a really good grasp on “things”, I guess “general educational topics” just come naturally to him.” Caleb Williams walks by, a line of thousands of kids from the class of 2021 follows closely behind in his footsteps.
This is probably not a terribly accurate portrait of the recruiting experience in 2021, but the point is kids now have access to a decision tool everybody else in America has had. They can choose where to exercise their talent based on the full range of possible monetary benefits different places can provide. Is this a good thing? If you are a talented football player yes. If you are a local used car dealer, probably yes. If you enjoy free markets, yes. If you enjoy college football, maybe? If you enjoy amateur athletics, no.
What should be, and what you want to be aren’t always the same. Yet often times we conflate the two, making ourselves believe what we want always should be. I enjoy amateur athletics. I find great value in watching sports played without the incentive of money. I enjoy forming bonds with players who spend 4 years developing into legends for a team they love at a university they’ve come to call home, even though they don’t know who I am. This is what I want, players who play for each other, for their school, for beating the rival, and for nothing else. I don’t want NIL necessarily. It’s not because I don’t want the players to not have any money, I don’t want money to be even 1% of the reason they play.
I bet your boss wants you to go to work because you love your company, hate your competitors, and by golly you love paperwork. By the way you don’t get paid, or rather you get paid something that isn’t really worth your market value. Also if you quit you have to be unemployed for a year before working anywhere else. Sounds like an awful deal right? That shouldn’t be how things work and luckily it isn’t in America.
Now, state legislatures have… written laws to say that the law of the land that already exists applies to college athletes as well? I’m not really sure what exact law they made to be honest. Before July 1st I could pay an 18 year old to play football at a park if I wanted to. If that 18 year old went to Ohio State I guess that arrangement would be illegal? Anyway, in doing so state legislatures have forced the NCAA to awake from it’s coma and lurch around ineptly at the last minute. This aimless thrashing gave rise to limited oversight and weird guidelines about how you can only kinda use NIL as a recruiting tool.
At this point the job of the NCAA isn’t really governing college sports at all, the job of the NCAA is to be a deflector shield that absorbs body blows from every angle for decades like the dead horse that it is while Universities and the NFL largely avoid blame. The correct path is to have a minor league governed by the NFL age limited to 23 and under. The NFL doesn’t want this because it’s likely not profitable and colleges seem willing to do it for free. The Universities don’t want this because college football makes money. So, in a way, the NCAA is a highly functioning, well-oiled machine, but only if you consider that its’ actual purpose is to maintain this system for the universities and the NFL. College basketball is heading in the right direction. I know, I know, ratings are down, interest is low, but that’s not the point. The point is that the NBA has laid the groundwork for a professional minor league system. Now, adultindividuals who can make money off of their ability are able to do so while colleges might actually begin fielding teams of amateurs who are going to go make money elsewhere later and are simply playing for pleasure… This feels a lot like what should be and what I want.
With football, the way things are now is closer to what should be with the introduction of NIL. College football will likely still be extremely enjoyable, for some perhaps not as enjoyable as before but that’s ok. We’ll still have the bands, we’ll still have tailgates, we will still beat That Team Up North.For the most part, players will still play for each other and only a little bit because that one booster paid 50k to cut his yard. Teams of mercenaries will hopefully be few and far between. At the end of the day Ohio State Football will still mean something to me and you, even if our endzones are devoid of supercars.
If you made it this far you have too much free time. Get a job, you dirty hippy. But really thanks for reading, maybe I’ll get back into writing more.
