By Ryan Bologna
April 12, 2022
Only Play­ers

We are in the ear­ly stages of the NIL and one-time trans­fer era in col­lege sports. We are still fig­ur­ing out who it helps and who it hurts. Let’s dive into it.

Logis­ti­cal­ly one of the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be schools that have big fan bases in areas with no pro­fes­sion­al sports teams. Schools like Alaba­ma, Arkansas, West Vir­ginia, and Nebras­ka are exam­ples. They are the main sports focus of their areas, so NIL will make those des­ti­na­tions more desir­able for recruits because they pro­vide more oppor­tu­ni­ties for deals and brand building.

The top-rat­ed recruits will still end up going to the estab­lished top pro­grams, as they already have big brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and have a foothold on those play­ers already. One of the biggest exam­ples of this already hap­pen­ing is with the UConn Women’s Bas­ket­ball pro­gram. They were already land­ing tons of top recruits, but after Azzi Fudd filmed a Tik­Tok com­mer­cial with Allen Iver­son in addi­tion to NIL deals with Chipo­tle and Amer­i­can Eagle in just her Fresh­man year at UConn it strength­ened their pitch even more.

https://twitter.com/Radio_Reem/status/1453858031976976384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1453858031976976384%7Ctwgr%5Ef8e409725c6c8670ef030ce41b8a56338f94ab9b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onlyplayers.com%2Fhow-do-nil-deals-and-the-transfer-portal-change-college-sports

Despite this, NIL deals can ben­e­fit “sec­ond-tier” pro­grams. For the most part NIL deals will go to the star play­ers, leav­ing depth play­ers at top schools hang­ing with lit­tle NIL oppor­tu­ni­ties and less play­ing time. That could result in schools like Alaba­ma and Ohio State not get­ting those four-star recruits for depth as much as they did before.

As a four-star recruit, why go to Alaba­ma or Ohio State and sit behind a five-star play­er for a cou­ple of years while they get the NIL deals and play­ing time? A pro­gram like Pur­due can offer the poten­tial of more expo­sure and play­ing time for those play­ers. It could even lead to a faster path to the NFL for some like it did for Ron­dale Moore. He nev­er would have got­ten play­ing time over play­ers like Jaylen Wad­dle at Alaba­ma, but he became a star at Pur­due and got picked in the sec­ond round of the 2021 draft.

Schools with ties to com­pa­nies are in a posi­tion to ben­e­fit as well. Ore­gon is one of the biggest exam­ples due to its rela­tion­ship with Nike. They beat out Alaba­ma for edge rush­er Kayvon Thi­bodeaux in 2019, and he just recent­ly cit­ed that as to why he chose Ore­gon. Mary­land is a school to watch for, as they are try­ing to cre­ate a sim­i­lar dynam­ic with Under Armour.

https://twitter.com/CFBONFOX/status/1481297815640944644?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1481297815640944644%7Ctwgr%5Ef8e409725c6c8670ef030ce41b8a56338f94ab9b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onlyplayers.com%2Fhow-do-nil-deals-and-the-transfer-portal-change-college-sports

The new one-time trans­fer rule impacts the top recruits that do not suc­ceed right away and look no fur­ther than the roller-coast­er sea­son that Okla­homa foot­ball just had. Spencer Rat­tler came into the sea­son per­ceived as a star and poten­tial first-round pick in the 2022 NFL draft. He strug­gled ear­ly on, and he even­tu­al­ly got benched in the mid­dle of their game against Texas.

Caleb Williams came in and hero­ical­ly brought them back to win the game, mak­ing Okla­homa fans believe they have a solu­tion. Then late in the sea­son Williams and Okla­homa lose a heart­break­er to Okla­homa State to miss the Big 12 title game. To top it all off Head Coach Lin­coln Riley left for South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and Williams decid­ed to trans­fer as well. Where did he end up? You guessed it, South­ern California.

Rat­tler did man­age to main­tain suc­cess with NIL deals despite his lack of suc­cess on the field, as he secured a deal with a South Car­oli­na Chevro­let dealership.

All in all that is a bad fan expe­ri­ence for Okla­homa fans, they lose their head coach and their quar­ter­back to the same school. Many fans, includ­ing myself, will not have any empa­thy for Okla­homa fans. But these rules impact the lit­tle guy as well.

Look no fur­ther than St. Peter’s sen­sa­tion Doug Edert. He is try­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­i­ty by trans­fer­ring to a school that will make him more vis­i­ble. This will be a com­mon trend for break­out play­ers from small schools in all col­lege sports, and there is not much that can be done to pre­vent this from happening.

These fac­tors cre­ate con­cern for mid-major pro­grams. Schools that find dia­monds in the rough will have a tougher time than ever retain­ing their tal­ent, as those play­ers will no longer be required to sit out a year and can not offer the same oppor­tu­ni­ties for NIL deals.

In total­i­ty NIL deals and one-time trans­fer, rules have ben­e­fits and draw­backs for the fan expe­ri­ence. I think the most like­ly out­come is that the top pro­grams see min­i­mal change if any, while sec­ond-tier pro­grams ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly and low­er-lev­el pro­grams get hurt the most. The fan expe­ri­ence is either helped or hurt depend­ing on what pro­gram you follow.