Maybe these are reminders; maybe they're just reminisces...
The true value of being a freshman at a talent-heavy top team like USC or LSU is all the hours of practice you get, going up against the best college players day-after-day. That's where you grow and improve. The minutes you get in an actual game may be reward, but they aren't going to improve your game.
The true reward of remaining with such a team is that in your final two years you get to display your now developed talents at their best in games, after two years of development while the public was not watching.
As a system, it worked. That is, it worked IF the player's goal was (internally) to develop their basketball game to its highest, and (externally) to play for pay in the pros somewhere. (BTW: Overseas travel, for many, is its own unique reward, so we shouldn't presume that the WNBA is everyone's idea of success.)
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But now, the introduction of NIL shifts a player's focus (and maybe for the better) on their status when they leave college, and what they want to achieve as an adult. To leave college with a degree in something you love and +$40,000 seed money to start a business or pursue your mission is nothing to scoff at--especially when your fellow graduates against whom you're competing in the marketplace are entering adulthood with debt instead of capital.
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I miss the old system. I still believe in lifetime values of loyalty and being a member of something bigger than yourself. I think our human psychological health will always require those things.
But I've also grown up in an era (beginning in the early 60s) where institutions and societal influences have consistently been leaning toward extending adolescence, delaying adulthood, avoiding risk, and encouraging dependence on powers that we don't control.
Those influences today seem to share one common byproduct: population reduction. So if there's gonna be fewer humans, let's hope they are the ones with competitive spirits and internalized values of individual achievement and teamwork. Ironically, NIL may prove to benefit society in unintended ways.
(I still don't like it, but I'm old, and change just robs me of the expertise I've slowly and often painfully accumulated over the years. It's not like it was back in agrarian days, where experience always equated to applicable wisdom, and people could improve their lives by learning from their elders' mistakes and successes. Maybe that's why brave new worlds always require bravery...)