Originally published at: https://pistolsfiringblog.com/endorsement-matches-we-want-to-see-in-new-nil-era/
Spencer and Bass Pro is a match made in NIL heaven.
Once they start doing the kind of endorsement deals you’re talking about, it will be pure professional sports. College teams won’t have anything to do with the college anymore, just what somebody was willing to pay a few players. The current Supreme Court ruling as I read it only enforced extra direct educational compensation. It didn’t make all this Name Image Likeness stuff the law. I’m not against giving college athletes more money. But not open ended amounts for phony endorsement deals. Maybe not for endorsement deals period except perhaps for sports training camps for kids. Maybe the ‘system’ isn’t uncorrupted but it’s better than what this will be. These athletes would get hardly anything for playing some kind of development league professional ball or whatever they would get for playing USL league level soccer or something. There’s no perfect arrangement perhaps. But if they make it to where it’s just completely stupid to believe there’s any real ‘student’ connection between the athletes and the school … I have no interest in watching that or supporting that or following that or paying for that. It will be interesting to see what people have to try to turn to to try to take up their time. Maybe it ought to be politics. If the politicians and people who can buy them get the idea that people are putting more effort into watching what’s going on and putting more time into that, they’ll be sorrier they were so determined to completely professionalize and thereby completely kill our college sports. The real professional sports have a Draft to protect a balance of competitiveness. NIL the way you describe it will be professional sports without a draft. It will be a complete ripoff fake of anything that was ‘college’ about ‘college sports’. Oh well, the so called ‘News’ is faker than it ever was before. So, now college sports which has long been a certain degree of fake perhaps will now be completely totally fake. It goes with the times I guess. Just for me though, if I want to go something sports once this NIL player buying completely sets in, given any choice I think I’d rather see something that wasn’t trying to pretend about what it was. Most of the athletes won’t be any differently positioned. But they’re going to resent and not appreciate the big money people they’re supposed to be teammates with and that is not going to be fun to watch. It just isn’t going to be.