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College Football and NIL Deals: The Benefits, Challenges, and the Path Forward

ByKern Campbell

As players profit from endorsements, ethical and competitive concerns mount, leading to calls for regulated revenue sharing.

photo of a player signing to play college sports

The Impact of NIL Deals on College Football: A Game-Changing Revolution in Collegiate Athletics

In recent years, the intersection of college athletics and compensation has undergone a seismic shift. For decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) maintained strict limits on college athletes’ income potential, arguing that payments might disrupt competitive balance and dilute the spirit of amateurism.

Then, the advent of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals, legally sanctioned in 2021, cracked open that paradigm. Now, student-athletes across the country can sign deals based on their NIL, enabling some to earn significant sums from endorsement contracts.

On the surface, the NIL system seems a long-overdue form of compensation. After all, college athletes generate massive revenue for their universities and, until recently, could not earn directly from their skills. However, as NIL transforms the recruiting landscape and divides programs into distinct financial classes, new ethical and logistical concerns have emerged.

Particularly troubling is the influence of boosters and collectives, well-heeled donor groups who funnel NIL money toward recruits and star players.

If college sports are to find a balanced approach, perhaps a fairer model exists: allow athletes to share in university revenues, administered and monitored by the schools themselves—not by external actors with private agendas.

The Donor Dilemma: When “Pay-for-Play” Isn’t So Far Off

NIL Pay To Play

Under current NCAA guidelines, NIL deals are permitted as long as they don’t constitute “pay-for-play”—direct compensation for athletic performance.

Yet, in practice, many NIL arrangements, especially those backed by wealthy alumni groups, blur this line. University collectives, driven by donors, are increasingly offering athletes NIL packages that indirectly reward them for joining a specific program or transferring to another.

This donor-driven economy, untethered to performance metrics or educational support, has sparked a bidding war for top athletes, making it hard to deny that we’re seeing the rise of a quasi-professional system in college sports.

“Effectively, players can be bought.”

Former Alabama Head Coach, Nick Saban

“Effectively, players can be bought,” Alabama’s head coach Nick Saban remarked, capturing the worries of many​. Boosters, who once limited their influence to fundraising and facilities, now have a direct impact on which athletes join or stay at their chosen schools.

With money as a deciding factor, schools that cannot muster substantial booster backing are left at a disadvantage—a situation that shifts power away from schools and toward those who write the checks.

This growing discrepancy between wealthy programs and less-resourced ones only solidifies an already unlevel playing field.

Revenue Sharing: A Middle Ground for Fair Compensation

While boosters’ influence poses clear issues, there’s another, more regulated way to ensure college athletes are fairly compensated without sacrificing the integrity of college sports.

A revenue-sharing model, administered by each school and backed by existing compliance departments, could allow athletes to benefit financially while preserving equity in the system.

Revenue sharing would function like many professional sports leagues: athletes receive a set percentage of revenues generated by their team or athletic department.

Unlike NIL, revenue sharing is inherently linked to the program’s actual earnings, potentially providing all players in revenue-generating sports with financial rewards while preserving the competitive spirit.

A properly monitored revenue-sharing plan could streamline and standardize compensation for athletes while reducing incentives for boosters to pull strings behind the scenes.

The beauty of this approach lies in its structure. College athletic departments already manage vast budgets and oversee compliance operations to ensure both athletes and schools avoid violations.

By keeping compensation within these regulated boundaries, schools can avoid the ethical quagmires that come with direct payments from alumni and private parties.

Here, the funding comes from university revenues, limiting the influence of private actors who may have vested interests beyond athletic success.

Compliance and Oversight: Essential Safeguards for Integrity

One advantage of university-led compensation is the added layer of compliance and oversight. Compliance departments are already tasked with safeguarding students and the institution from NCAA violations and outside interference.

In a revenue-sharing model, these departments could manage compensation distribution, ensuring that all athletes are paid in accordance with transparent guidelines. This centralized model keeps athletes’ best interests in mind, especially in cases of young recruits who might otherwise be exploited by donors and agents with ulterior motives.

By contrast, NIL collectives, which are often affiliated with boosters, operate outside this regulated framework. NIL collectives aren’t bound to the same rigorous standards and can, therefore, offer contracts that may be designed with conditions more beneficial to donors than players.

This murky landscape places athletes in a vulnerable position, where their decisions are subject to potentially manipulative contracts. A school-led system would cut through this by adhering to clear standards designed with student welfare, rather than donor satisfaction, at its heart.

Toward a Fairer Future in College Sports

The concept of NIL was intended to empower athletes, but its implementation has opened the door to unintended consequences.

Rather than leveling the playing field, NIL has inadvertently made it harder for certain programs to compete, driven recruitment incentives away from performance and education, and created a “pay-to-play” atmosphere—all fueled by wealthy donors eager to build influence.

Without a system of checks and balances, the gulf between well-funded and underfunded programs is only expected to grow.

Allowing athletes to share in university revenue, regulated by the institutions themselves, offers a middle ground that respects the contribution of student-athletes without undermining the core values of collegiate sports.

As college athletics grapple with this new era, the key is to ensure that compensation aligns with the mission of higher education and the spirit of amateurism—values that once defined college sports and are worth preserving.

In the end, it’s about balance: recognizing the rights of athletes to profit from their efforts without turning them into de facto professionals beholden to donors. Revenue sharing, institutionally regulated and administered, might be the compromise needed to restore integrity to college sports, allowing players to be rewarded while preserving the purity of competition.

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