Is college football in danger with NIL deals?

With the recent rumors of the Pittsburgh Panther’s star WR Jordan Addison being offered over $2 million through a NIL deal to transfer to the USC Trojans, the Texas Longhorns also have reportedly offered over $2 million through NIL to transfer to Texas.  All of this makes the fans of college football wonder if there is a big problem going on with NIL deals with collegiate athletes.

NIL deals are name, image, and likeness deals for college athletes, so the athletes have the ability to make money off of themselves.  NIL has a great purpose for athletes to make money, and it is a lot better than the athletes getting no money when colleges have been making millions and millions of dollars off of them.

NIL deals started off great with many athletes using it for charities or with brand deals with local companies. This includes Pitt Long Snapper Cal Adomatis diving right into NIL by raising $114,000 for Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital through him shaving his head. NIL has also allowed NCAA football to come back in 2023 so all video game players love to hear that.

The place where NIL deals started to go wrong is when school-affiliated NIL companies started popping up. Currently, if your favorite college doesn’t have a school-affiliated NIL company, they are at a complete disadvantage.

Colleges with school-affiliated NIL companies are now taking full advantage of collegiate athletes, and Jordan Addison is the most recent example of it.

The Pitt WR was reportedly offered by USC over $2 million to leave Pitt and transfer to USC.  He also has been reportedly offered over $2 million by Texas to transfer to USC. Because of this offer, Addison has entered the transfer portal and is most likely headed to USC or Texas.

Jordan Addison is not at fault for this craziness. He would be crazy to not take millions of dollars to play football at USC instead of the $250,000 he was making at Pitt. The NCAA  is at fault for not making any restrictions with NIL deals when they first became a thing in 2021.

Hopefully, the NCAA stops this from happening anymore and makes a change as soon as possible.