Is NIL Harmful to College Athletics?

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What used to separate professional sports from college was that professional athletes were paid, while college athletes were not. Collegiate athletes relied solely on scholarships or money out of pocket in order to pay for college. This highlighted the “student” title in “student-athlete.” Kids had to worry about keeping up with school while also keeping up with their sport. Their ultimate goal was to reach the professional leagues and make money there. But in 2021, the NCAA introduced a new deal that paid the players based on name, image, and likeness, otherwise known as NIL. What this did for college athletes is allowed them to make money by selling their name, image, and likeness. This also allowed colleges to pay athletes to come to their school when recruiting out of high school. Colleges can do this by getting money from boosters and collectives that are donated to them. This completely changes the game for student-athletes, and changes their goals in their sport. While they wanted to become professionals in order to get paid before, they now have the opportunity to make money in college and stay in school longer. This has become a heavily debated topic in recent years, as many people believe that it hurts the competitiveness and integrity of college athletics, while others claim that the players deserve to be rewarded for what they do. Colleges should be careful when paying student-athletes through NIL, as it can be a strong resource that benefits these kids, but can also harm the sports and leave permanent damage.

Perspective #1: The Benefits of NIL in College Athletics

Many fans, athletes, and colleges believe that athletes receive many benefits when paid by colleges. In the article, “Why NIL Has Been Good For College Sports ... and the Hurdles That Remain” from Jay Bilas, he argues that student-athletes being paid benefits everyone as a whole. His first point is that it’s not just the top athletes being paid, but instead all athletes are paid. Bilas says that before NIL was implemented, “[c]ritics of NIL predicted that only the top 1% of athletes would make any money.” Now, colleges have proven that more athletes have taken advantage of NIL than initially predicted through jersey sales and other outside sponsorships. Later, he also highlights how much women have also benefited from NIL, especially because of their presence on social media, emphasizing that social media has allowed some of these top female athletes to get brand deals like Gatorade and StockX (Bilas). In a world where college has gotten more expensive and harder to pay for while playing a sport, the ability to pay all the athletes has allowed for more people to follow their dreams of playing sports in college and not have to worry as much about the cost, especially because scholarships were very limited before NIL. Bilas also says that NIL has kept kids in school longer and taught them more financial literacy. He claims that because athletes can make as much as professional athletes in some cases, they choose to stay in school to earn more money and also get a degree. They also learn financial literacy because of having to handle money at a young age and learning how to spend it and save it properly (Bilas). The effect that NIL has had on the education of these student-athletes is something that nobody saw coming, but has been a big benefit of NIL. Jay Bilas also touches on the fact that before NIL, the same schools were always at the top, dominating the sport. Then, he says, “NIL helps level that very uneven playing field” (Bilas). A level playing field benefits both the university athletic programs, as well as the viewers' experience. With NIL, college programs can succeed better with the potential to bring in top athletes and compete at a higher level, as well as the viewer experience because they can see new teams at the top of their sport every year. So, due to these benefits to all groups of people, many athletes, colleges, and fans tend to side with the benefits of NIL.

Perspective #2: The Drawbacks of NIL in College Athletics

On the other end of the spectrum, the general public usually believe that paying college athletes is not good for college athletics. SportsEpreneur has an article that highlights the drawbacks of name, image, and likeness and why it might not be all good, titled “NIL Is Bad: How the Current System Is Failing College Sports.” SportsEpreneur starts out by claiming that it ruins the competitiveness of college sports because “[l]arge programs with wealthy donor bases and extensive alumni networks can facilitate multimillion-dollar NIL opportunities that smaller schools simply cannot match” (SportsEpreneur). Examples of these large programs in college football are colleges like Alabama or Ohio State, two of the biggest brands in the sport. Because their brands are so large, they can outbid a team like Eastern Washington who doesn’t have a large brand with lots of money to spend on recruiting top athletes. Along with limiting the top talent, SportsEpreneur states that NIL creates a free agency situation with the transfer portal. Instead of players leaving a school for a different opportunity to play at another school, they now leave in order to get paid more money somewhere else and “choose the highest bidder,” causing teams to have to worry about how many players they will possibly lose and how much they have to replenish in the offseason (SportsEpreneur). Free agency is something that is for professional leagues when professional athletes have contracts, but the transfer portal has now turned into free agency because of college athletes being paid. On top of everything, SportsEpreneur points out that NIL has a lot of grey area surrounding how college athletes get paid and where the money comes from. It also gets interesting when trying to figure out how universities are allowed to help the athletes when handling the money (SportsEpreneur). In general, there seems to be a lot of complicated aspects when figuring out how to navigate paying college athletes, as well as a lot of drawbacks to the practice.

Points of Disagreement

There are a lot of similarities and differences between the articles from Jay Bilas and SportsEpreneur. The biggest difference overall between the two sources is how much the player talent gets spread out. Jay Bilas claims that while initially there was a large belief that only the biggest teams would still get the top talent, it has been proven that the talent has still been spread out among other teams. Bilas brings up something that coach Nick Saban claims, saying, “Texas A&M and even Jackson State may have ‘bought' recruits, implying that, without money as a factor, some of those players would have been at Alabama” (Bilas). However, the article from SportsEpreneur believes the opposite is the case. Like stated earlier, they state that only the biggest brand teams have the necessary resources to pay top dollar when offering players, while smaller schools just don’t have the budget (SportsEpreneur). The disparity between these two claims is pretty clear in that there is a lot of disagreement on the impact of NIL and how it gets used. While Bilas is correct in saying that the talent level can be more spread out since more mid-level teams can have a wealthy alumni donor and be able to compete, SportsEpreneur can also be right when saying that the low-level teams still can’t compete because they don’t necessarily have the same wealthy alumni to pay up to the level of the top programs. Depending on the perspective that you see it through, they both have factual statements that apply to the situation.

Points of Agreement

The most agreed upon aspect in these two articles is that NIL is a good concept in theory. Jay Bilas states, “Conceptually, NIL means that college athletes can now earn and accept money doing commercial endorsements, appearances and social media posts, writing books, hosting camps, giving lessons and performing various other commercial activities outside of their schools, all without running afoul of NCAA rules” (Bilas). With the same idea in mind, SportsEpreneur writes, “Let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean NIL is all bad. The core principle—that athletes deserve compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness—remains valid and important” (SportsEpreneur). Bilas and SportsEpreneur both believe that the concept of NIL is important for college athletics and something that is long overdue. Both of these articles claim that the athletes put in enough work into their sport and schooling to deserve some sort of payment other than scholarships that not every player can get. But they both think that the way NIL works could be changed. Bilas talks about the possibility of setting a limit on how much teams can spend or athletes can make, like a salary cap in professional sports (Bilas). Similarly, SportsEpreneur suggests that the government gets involved in regulating how players are paid, as well as clear rules set by the NCAA on where NIL money comes from (SportsEpreneur). Even in two articles that have two different opinions on NIL, there are still topics that they can find common ground on to cause less disagreement surrounding the topic of paying college athletes.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Source #1

The article from Jay Bilas believes that paying college athletes is a benefit for everyone overall. In his article, there are things that both strengthen and weaken that argument. One of the biggest strengths for Bilas is his credibility. Bilas is a longtime college sports analyst, specifically focusing on college basketball, which is one of the biggest stages in college sports. Another strength is that he not only talks about the positive side of paying college athletes, but he also provides limitations and negatives to his argument. He talks about some of the key negatives, such as how “[t]he NCAA has been diminished in the NIL saga, creating instability,” “[d]iffering state laws help NCAA obscure the NIL message,” “[t]he threat of congressional intervention and NCAA litigation is bad for college sports,” and “NIL and recruiting [and] the ongoing confusion over ‘collectives’” (Bilas). Within these limitations, Jay Bilas made sure to provide some sort of rebuttal that used these limitations and negatives to support the argument that NIL is good for college sports. One weakness of his article, however, is its relevancy to the current state of NIL. This article is still pretty new from 2022. However, there have been a lot of new changes to how NIL works as well as recent court cases that change NIL. An example of this is explained in the article, “Judge OK's $2.8B Settlement, Paving Way For Colleges to Pay Athletes" from Dan Murphy. When talking about the recent court case House v. NCAA, Murphy writes, “The NCAA will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 through present day. Moving forward, each school can pay its athletes up to a certain limit . . . and increase every year” (Murphy). At the time of Bilas writing his article and mentioning the use of salary caps, there wasn’t a ruling that implemented a limit on paying players. However, just a couple years later, Murphy highlights a court ruling that sets a limit on NIL, which speaks to how the article from Bilas is even a little outdated after just a couple years. One other weakness from the article is the lack of specific statistics and evidence. Throughout the article Jay Bilas makes claims on the benefits of NIL, but uses very few actual statistics to back up the claims he makes. They are used to support points occasionally, but not often.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Source #2

In the second source from SportsEpreneur, their biggest strength is the use of specific pieces of evidence to support their claims. This is a practice seen multiple times throughout the article. Early in the article, they bring up the case of Nico Iamaleava when making their point on how NIL is “[p]ay-for-[p]lay in [d]isguise,” and dives into the whole story about him leaving Tennessee for a new school because he wanted more money. Later in the article, when making the point about the transfer portal creating a free agency situation, SportsEpreneur uses specific evidence from a coach claiming that they lose 25 to 30 players in football because of the NIL offers from other schools being more than they can afford (SportsEpreneur). SportsEpreneur using specific evidence from direct sources in the college sports world is something that is seen sometimes from Jay Bilas, but more often seen in the article from SportsEpreneur. An additional strength to the first is that they provide updates that have come since releasing the article, such as new court cases, rulings, and law changes that affect how NIL is implemented into college sports. One of the main weaknesses however is that they don’t necessarily include limitations to their points. Throughout the whole article, it feels that SportsEpreneur continues to add reason after reason for why NIL is wrong, instead of bringing up limitations for their reasons against paying college athletes. This was also something that was done opposite of Jay Bilas, as he highlighted the key drawbacks to his benefits of paying college athletes.

Compromise

Even though one source believes that NIL is good for the sport and the other believes that it is wrong, they both seem to come to the same conclusion. The conclusion is that no matter what, NIL isn’t going anywhere anytime in the future, is here for good, and is an overall good concept that just needs some work to refine how it functions. As brought up earlier, they bring up good ideas to regulate the increase of NIL. These ideas are the use of a salary cap or for the government or NCAA to step in and increase their regulation. However, there are still some things that athletes and schools need to be careful about when handling lots of money in these situations. For athletes, it’s especially important that school is a primary focus when attending college. It could be easy to lose focus of this because they are paid such large amounts of money to play their sport. It’s important to prioritize education though because sports will not be there forever. However, both articles seem to agree that NIL and college athletes being paid have a place in college athletics.

Works Cited

Bilas, Jay. “Why NIL Has Been Good For College Sports ... and the Hurdles That Remain.” ESPN, 29 June 2022, www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/34161311/why-nil-good-college-sports- hurdles-remain.

Murphy, Dan. “Judge OK's $2.8B Settlement, Paving Way For Colleges to Pay Athletes." ESPN, 6 June 2025, www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/45467505/judge-grants-final-approval-house-v-           ncaa-settlement.

“NIL Is Bad: How the Current System Is Failing College Sports.” SportsEpreneur, 18 May 2025,         https://sportsepreneur.com/nil-is-bad-system-failing-college-sports/.