NIL Is it Really Good for College Athletes?

The NIL pro­gram estab­lished in 2021 has offi­cial­ly giv­en col­le­giate ath­letes the abil­i­ty to earn income based on their skills, but it has caused some uproar on how much is too much. Col­lege ath­letes are start­ing to earn more then some pro ath­letes, and also some col­leges have begun monop­o­liz­ing the pro­gram, cre­at­ing teams based sole­ly off the fact they have more mon­ey. Today I dis­cuss NIL issues, and NIL on our own cam­pus with two stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut who have deep­er under­stand­ings on the program.

TRANSCRIPT:

Niko: In recent years, col­lege ath­letes have final­ly been able to receive pay­ment for their skillsets, in the form of Name Image Like­ness mon­ey. July 1^st, 2021, the NCAA approves new rules that final­ly allow col­le­giate ath­letes to prof­it from their auto­graph, endorse­ment deals, and busi­ness ventures. 

Niko: NIL has changed the land­scape of col­lege sports in many ways, and many believe that it has changed the game for the worse. NIL has offi­cial­ly added a busi­ness mod­el to play­ing a col­lege sport, mean­ing ath­letes are con­stant­ly chas­ing the best way to earn more income. 

Niko: My name is Niko­las Dziedz­ic, and I am here with 

Kaleb: Kaleb Jennings 

Niko: It is my under­stand­ing that you did a research arti­cle on this top­ic right? 

Kaleb: Yes, I did. 

Niko: First and fore­most, do you think col­lege ath­letes deserve to be paid? 

Kaleb: Col­lege Sports is a very prof­itable busi­ness, espe­cial­ly foot­ball and bas­ket­ball. You know, they’re mak­ing so much mon­ey, and I have seen how much these kids work and put so much time into it, they’re earn­ing so much for the pro­grams. They deserve more than a schol­ar­ship, espe­cial­ly because it is so hard to make it to the next lev­el and final­ly get the mon­ey. If you are mak­ing mon­ey for a pro­gram, and not good enough to be in the pros, you still deserve to be com­pen­sat­ed. I do think it is a lit­tle out of hand now because there is no cap on it, so it’s easy for play­ers to flip flop schools. 

Niko: a great exam­ple of NIL affect­ing play­ers careers is Miami’s new quar­ter­back Car­son Beck. Beck got hurt this past sea­son and was knew that his chances in the NFL draft were slim, but the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi offered him a large sum of mon­ey around the 3–4‑million-dollar range. To put this into per­spec­tive, the top 12 NFL draft picks are expect­ed to receive 5 mil­lion dol­lars a year. 

Kaleb Jen­nings: I think it is a lit­tle crazy, espe­cial­ly as some­one who has not won a nation­al cham­pi­onship, or a Heis­man, and has nev­er been in those con­ver­sa­tions. To be mak­ing as much as an NFL first round rook­ie contract. 

Niko: as great as it is for these young stu­dent ath­letes to be suc­ceed­ing and bring­ing in largescale income for their tal­ents, unfor­tu­nate­ly the cur­rent NIL and trans­fer por­tal mod­el has cre­at­ed a rough sce­nario, ath­letes leav­ing their teams for more mon­ey. Cur­rent­ly there is no lim­it to trans­fer­ring, so ath­letes can leave their school any­time they have a bet­ter offer else­where. This has led many to won­der how much is too much. 

Kaleb: But the fact that play­ers can go to a school for a year, go to schools for not even a whole sea­son, but only a peri­od, for just a spring or for just a fall, and then trans­fer and go get mon­ey some­where else and can do this, I’ve seen it done now three,  four times  in  one  play­er’s  career.  I think it’s a lit­tle absurd, and I think that’s where the issue lies. 

Niko: I com­plete­ly agree with that, play­ers no longer have dream schools, they just go where they can get paid the most, and it just leads to super teams. 

 Niko: More than 31000 ath­letes entered the trans­fer por­tal last year, all look­ing for the best oppor­tu­ni­ty to play their sport at a dif­fer­ent school for either more mon­ey… or play­ing time. 

Niko: Storrs Cen­tral, the “offi­cial NIL part­ner of UConn Ath­let­ics”, is a news site that offers paid sub­scrip­tion tiers, as well as hosts their own fundrais­ing, to pro­vide NIL mon­ey to our campus’s ath­let­ic pro­grams. Evan Rodriguez, a writer and pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the orga­ni­za­tion, is with me to talk about NIL through his eyes as a mem­ber of an NIL program. 

Evan Rodriguez: So essen­tial­ly Storrs Cen­tral was start­ed as sort of like na adja­cent com­pa­ny with bleed blue for good. Essen­tial­ly with the house set­tle­ment and every­thing, a lot of schools are mov­ing away from, you know, hav­ing those types of com­pa­nies han­dle a lot of char­i­ty work and that type of stuff. So, Storrs Cen­tral has shift­ed more to be a mar­ket­ing agency for these play­ers to get deals. We part­nered with Peo­ples Bank and they’re doing an open­ing in Avon tomor­row. So, you can essen­tial­ly meet Sarah Strong, Solo Ball, and Ter­race Reid from the bas­ket­ball teams. They get paid and can help the com­mu­ni­ty come togeth­er. It’s essen­tial­ly a mar­ket­ing agency mov­ing away from Bleed Blue for Good. 

Niko: Yeah, that’s dope, so you guys are kind of giv­ing the play­ers a plat­form? 
 
Evan: Yeah, and you know, find­ing a way to get the school and the play­ers more NIL dol­lars, which has become obvi­ous­ly a big part of ath­let­ics in 2025. I think the great­est thing with UConn is that they’ve allowed them­selves to be super com­pet­i­tive in the NIL land­scape, even with them not being in a Pow­er 5 con­fer­ence for foot­ball specif­i­cal­ly, where you’re see­ing schools make tons and tons of cash or have a large donor base. But UConn with their large fan base and how theyve been able to stay com­pet­i­tive on the NIL front. Like, Storrs Cen­tral is essen­tial­ly designed to help them stay com­pet­i­tive. You essen­tial­ly buy a sub­scrip­tion for Storrs Cen­tral and then that mon­ey goes towards the play­ers. Also, if I make a graph­ic and I put anoth­er com­pa­nies’ logo, that mon­ey will go toward the play­ers as well. Or any com­pa­ny deals that were able to help the mar­ket for them will also go toward the players. 

Niko: Storrs Cen­tral did get the logo at the Rent [Rentschler Field] , Right? 

Evan: WE did yeah 

Niko: So would you say that logo there gen­er­at­ed more traf­fic and money? 

Evan: Absolute­ly yes. So from the moment it was announced, it was one of the more unique NIL deals that we saw in col­lege ath­let­ics to the point where it was pret­ty much imme­di­ate­ly mar­ket­ed on ESPN. It was pret­ty quick­ly fea­tured on the Pat McAfee show, and we did not even think it would actu­al­ly gar­ner that much atten­tion. It was a great mar­ket­ing tool not only for the school, but also our com­pa­ny, to the point where we were able to sort of become more a face of help­ing to mar­ket foot­ball. One of our biggest donors to Storrs Cen­tral, is Mike Bur­ton, and he is also like one of the biggest faces of the UConn foot­ball donor base. Its been pret­ty cool, Like its def­i­nite­ly helped to grow the com­pa­ny and helped earn the play­ers more mon­ey as well. 

Niko: Do you truth­ful­ly believe that we are going to keep rais­ing more mon­ey and we are going to be able to keep build­ing our team? 

Evan: Yeah absolute­ly, I think UConn foot­ball specif­i­cal­ly, like the fact that Mike Bur­ton has been super like, focused on help­ing, you know, raise that mon­ey. I feel like that does affect them in a such a pos­i­tive way. He’s help­ing oth­er peo­ple get involved with UConn Foot­ball, and even specif­i­cal­ly with Storrs Cen­tral, as that com­pa­ny grows, they’re going to be able to help gen­er­ate more mon­ey for UConn Foot­ball and help them be able to stay com­pet­i­tive in the NIL land­scape. We are already see­ing them be able to attract so many more high-pro­file trans­fers than they were able to, even back when I worked for them. So, I think they’re in a real­ly good spot right now, and I think that it is only going to grow from here. 

Niko: NIL is a great addi­tion to the col­lege ath­let­ic land­scape. It is good to see that ath­letes are no longer being used as cash cows for large cam­pus­es to prof­it, but there are cer­tain things that need to hap­pen to pre­vent this from being abused. I think that a lim­it on trans­fer­ring would be a good solu­tion, so that teams can still retain their play­ers with­out try­ing to spend more and more mon­ey every new sea­son, but I want you as the view­ers should let me know what you think about the con­cept as a whole! 

Thank you every­one for lis­ten­ing and have a good day. 

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