NIL is essentially a welfare program for football and basketball players that now legitimizes what used to be illegal payments from boosters to players.
It has legitimized the corruption of college student-athletes. This all got started over a period of years when activists started complaining--without merit--that black athletes were being exploited by universities. Some of the student-athletes were from poor families, didn't have money to fly home for Christmas, blah, blah--and meantime the schools were making huge money from football games. The activists never talked about the free four-year college education the student-athletes were receiving, worth more than $200,000: free tuition, room, board, food, medical care, tutoring, counseling. Most regular college students in America go in debt to earn their degrees. You never heard--or hear--the activists or NIL proponents talk about the scholarship/education side because the scholarship is not cash. It's always about the cash. What's more, the scholarships, training, coaching, and TV exposure give the student-athletes to chance to play professionally--a chance most of them would /never/ have otherwise.
Sure, football programs make a lot of money. And then nearly all of that money gets reinvested in facilities and is used to fund all the non-revenue sports-- which are all that's left of amateur college athletics--pay for administration, travel, insurance, coaches salaries, etc. etc.
The NCAA can't regulate NIL because of the Supreme Court decision. How does it know what sort of regulations to implement without risking more lawsuits? Without regulations, the whole thing has predictably spun out of control and become very seedy and ridiculous can of worms. You've got athletic departments that now have to function as sport agents in addition to all their regular duties. The whole thing is mostly nonsense. I can see players or teams getting a cut of money if some private business uses their NIL to sell things--fine. But it all needs to be regulated, and pretty tightly, in my view. But even if it was, the NCAA doesn't have the manpower to scrutinize every business deal made by all of these shady boosters/bizmen.
Behond that, we've got athletic departments that are now going to pay student-athletes to maintain a certain GPA. Are you kidding? Talk about welfare. And most football and basketball players are not in demanding majors, to say the least. Most are in easy majors and take a lot of easy classes. It's ridiculous. What's ironic is that football and basketball players already have it much better than all the non-revenue athletes. They are all on full scholarships whereas the vast majority of non-revenue student-athletes are not.
