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Fifteen college football seasons ago, I stood inside the Georgia Dome as Alabama shockingly struck Tim Tebow it’s him Florida team in the SEC Championship Game, when Tebow cried on the sidelines and Alabama players mocked the Gator Chomp after a dominant victory.
I covered Tebow, still arguably the best college football player of all time, for three seasons in Gainesville. I saw him sign autographs of all kinds to kids, seniors, everyone – hats, shirts, T-shirts, anything – until it got so overbearing that he shyly asked a Florida official to drive him in and out of practice in a golf cart, understandably marked. that many of these subscriptions ended up being sold online and he did not make a profit.
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A few years later, I was in a hotel lobby with five-star quarterbacks Trevor Lawrence It is Justin Campos talking about recruiting, what’s good and bad about it, what they loved about the process, what they hated. NIL didn’t even exist back then. Money was never discussed. It wasn’t even considered at that time. Neither does the transfer portal.
A few years ago, for Rivals, I wrote a week-long series on NIL that naively only scratched the surface of what it has already become in just a few years. It was basic and covered broader NIL topics, but the name, image and likeness took so many forms and changed recruiting so much that it was difficult to understand until a few years ago.
It reached a different level in recent days when former four-star quarterback Jaden Rashada sued the Florida coach Billy Napiercollective operator Hugh Hathcock and a former Gators employee for fraud in what became the most famous NIL deal that never happened.
And then the landmark news Thursday night in the House v. NCAA that will pay billions in back damages to thousands of former players and – even more important for the world of recruiting and college football – a revenue share of about $20 million annually for each school to pay its athletes, or not , at your discretion.
There is an incredible amount of minutiae and legal terms involved in this agreement that would bore even a law student, so I will spare you the details.
Essentially, it comes down to this: College football and college athletics have changed forever in a short period of time. The unthinkable is about to become law. What used to be completely frowned upon and against everything the NCAA stood for (right or wrong) is now the basis for where we are headed.
Wow.
Questions remain. A lot of them. And I’m not going to claim that I have any of the answers yet because no one does. This is the reality of college football today – crazy times, changing times, uncertainty and everyone is in this together.
The first question will be how many schools will distribute the entire roughly $20 million to their student-athletes, and will it be distributed equally across all sports, both men’s and women’s, or will certain dollars go to revenue-generating sports? and will fewer dollars go to revenue-generating sports? for those who lose money to college. Essentially, will the star defender make as much money in school as the backup goalie on the women’s soccer team? And if not, are lawsuits coming?
There are also significant Title IX considerations here and this smacks of lawyers and advocacy groups on all sides taking a stand – especially now that a lot of money is at stake and perhaps some universities don’t feel legally obligated to distribute that money equally. It will be interesting to follow.
More from a recruiting standpoint, what do the unlimited scholarships and proposed but nebulous roster limits mean for each program? This could change the scope of recruitment in several ways.
And what does this do for NIL? Does it increase or decrease its importance, whether brought internally or through collectives? If a star player is making money for the school and can bring in some NIL money as icing on the cake, how does that change anything, if at all?
It seems like a hundred years ago that I stood on the lawn of the Georgia Dome and put on my voice recorder Nick Saban‘ face hoping for some postgame commentary to emerge as Crimson Tide fans screamed in excitement.
It seems like a long time ago that Lawrence and Fields went through the recruiting process. A lot has changed for them and the way players choose programs.
Thursday brought another important change to the sport. The adage that the only constant is change has never been truer in college football, for better or worse.
