Three years in and the college landscape has been changed by a landslide known as NIL. Has it been a boon for the students? Has it hurt the NCAA? What are the different effects the sports world has seen from this new college landscape? Let’s dive on in by explaining the two biggest parts of this new landscape: NIL and the Transfer Portal.

What is NIL?

Name-Image-Likeness is the ability for college athletes to get paid through endorsements, sponsorships, and even their own businesses. As of July 1 2021, the NCAA has allowed this monetization of players by those players. One of the most touted NIL deals will be coming out this summer in the form of EA Sports’ College Football ’25 video game which allowed players to opt in and get paid to have their NIL in the game.

While not all states have approved legislation, the vast majority have or are working towards its introduction. And there are some almost-unanimous provisions that states are putting on the athletes, namely no deals with or promoting: nicotine, tobacco, marijuana, gambling or sports betting.

How the Transfer Portal Works

The Transfer Portal is, in fact, a real place on the internet. Players can enter into this database and immediately inform schools they are looking to be wooed. Recently, players were exempted from penalty years of having to wait to play after a transfer as long as they meet academic standards and they can now transfer as often as they would like.

Consequences for Smaller Schools

Schools with smaller budgets and boosters obviously can’t compete with the Power 4 schools and many of them have become farm systems for these larger schools, especially the schools without Div-I football trying to compete with the big boys in other sports, namely basketball.

While only 15 of the top 100 football transfers are from non-Power 4 schools, the top five basketball transfers and 61 of the top 100 are non-Power 4 transfers. This leaves these mid-majors with an uphill battle they are not as equipped to handle as the Kentucky’s/Duke’s/UNC’s of the world. Dayton has lost three of their premier minutes and point producers to the portal, Indiana State has lost 5 of their arguably best-since-Bird team, and Drake and FAU have each lost 3. These are some of the cream of the crop mid-major programs over the last five years still bleeding players through the portal.

Without the large influx of cash from football, these mid-majors are unable to keep their players and face the battle of one-and-done for the first time. Is that fair to the other 136 conferences?

The man behind the curtain of NIL and the future of college sports as a whole, Jeffery Kessler, said it best:

You really have to think about [Power 4] as different,” Kessler said. “The reason we get tied in knots is because we conflate those schools who have developed these gigantic independent commercial businesses with the schools who are still just educational institutions with extracurricular activities. When you try to come up with one rule for all, you go crazy. You have to look at the schools differently. For the ones with the money, there is plenty of money to compensate the athletes and share it with the women’s sports.

“Once you divide it all up, this is not hard,” he continued. “It is only hard if you’re saying, ‘Well, how will Lehigh be able to afford all this?!’ They won’t and they won’t pay [athletes]. If their concern is that Lehigh then won’t be able to compete with Alabama in football… OK, that’s your concern? That’s your concern?!”

No one wants Lehigh in the same league as Alabama and Georgia. But how do you keep a football program at Lehigh when the players could get paid to go to Penn State? You force revenue sharing, much like the NBA and the NFL, upon the schools making money in their athletic departments. The majority of top tier schools are making over $100 million in revenue and not being forced to share any of this with the athletes bringing in the fans every weekend.

What’s the difference between the Pros and Power 4?

The big difference is the lack of CBA in the Power 4. Booster-led endorsement groups have sprung up around every large school to attract the best players in the country, but until the schools themselves are forced to recognize the student-athlete in some sort of employee status, the schools cannot give money directly to the athletes. Which also means students cannot force the issue with the school and are left to the whims of the booster endorsements. While Caleb Williams, Caitlin Clark, and Bronny James can rake in millions from their endorsements and sponsorships, that is not the life of the other 99% of student-athletes.

Notre Dame’s AD, Jack Swarbrick, who has been with the school since 2008- well before any mention of NIL- had this to say following his October testimony on Capitol Hill:

“It’s a fairly radical notion, but if we could find a way to reach binding agreements with our student-athletes, most of this goes away,” Swarbrick told Yahoo Sports. “We don’t have the mechanism to [collectively bargain] without them becoming employees. It would require a new mechanism that would recognize the rights of student-athletes to negotiate for the terms and conditions of their participation as athletes without being employees. I think it’s worth considering.” 

So Much Pressure

While it has always been a difficult life as a student-athlete budgeting your time between practices, team meetings, games, social functions, and that little thing called classes, the NIL and transfer portal have only upped the stressors on these young athletes. But, luckily, an increasing number of athletic trainers have been helping to address these affects on their players’ mental health. The stigma around mental health still exists across the country and can be seen in almost every venture, but, with the help of these trainers, some of the biggest names in sports are now able to be open and honest about these stressors and have found help when needed.

What are the Positives?

As much headache as the NIL and transfer era have caused to everyone involved, it is here to stay, so what can we look forward to and what are the benefits of this new era?

Starting with the athletes themselves, there’s the obvious benefit of being paid for the use of their talents and time.

Scholarships have been the pay-off for thousands of student-athletes over the last decades, but now more than ever there are one-and-done (or similar) athletes choosing to opt out of their schooling before finishing their degree. To these extremely talented athletes, the money behind a scholarship is not nearly as attractive as the real-world dollars they could earn in the professional sports world. Will they all make millions? No. But why risk injury playing out a college career for a degree you don’t want when you could chance the draft and play the sport you are good at right now, right now?

Now, athletes have a real choice to make between making money in the professional world with nothing to fall back on and the lucrative NIL deals they can get while still earning a degree. For the first time, there’s a choice to be made rather than just the instant draw of a rookie signing bonus. Even Caleb Williams’ father had this to say about the unlikely event Caleb wouldn’t be drafted where he wanted this year:

He’s got two shots at the apple… So if there’s not a good situation, the truth is, he can come back to school.

And secondly, these athletes are now getting valuable experience negotiating and drawing up contracts before they are forced into the professional world. So, even if they don’t go straight into the NFL, they have real experience with the business side of the house.

NIL is Here to Stay

While this will be a burden for many mid-majors until a CBA can be reached and larger schools are not in a league of their own, which might happen anyway, the NIL and Transfer Portal open up some engaging and life-changing possibilities for college athletes. They are no longer forced to stay at mid-level schools where their talents are above competition. They have opportunities to move up and go where the money is just like any competitive employee on the job market. And maybe without the spots for rookie phenoms on all the blue-blood teams due to the Portal, smaller schools will be able to recruit and utilize these flash-in-the-pan athletes to grown their own brand.