College NIL Continues To Grow, But Three Articles Can Change Your Thoughts

MIAMI, FL – NIL, also known as Name, Image, and Likeness is what has taken over the college athletics world, most notably in football. As we are now over two years since NIL was implemented into college athletics, there is a lot to take away from it looking at just three articles with contrasting opinions.

The first article, which is written by Jay Bilas of ESPN goes into both the positives and negatives of NIL just after on year of its existence. What mainly stands out about Bilas’s article is that he goes into how NIL has benefited all athletes, not just the high-end sports athletes, such as football and basketball.

Instead of basketball, football, and even baseball, we are seeing gymnasts and even lacrosse players earn big NIL deals due to their name, image, or likeness on social media or just because of the sports that they play.

An example that stood out to me while reading this article was TikTok star and LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, who has millions of followers on all social media accounts and has signed some of the biggest NIL deals. She is known as one of the wealthiest college athletes at the moment.

The article also highlights how not only male sports have benefited from NIL, but women’s sports as well. Jay Bilas mentioned that “all evidence indicates that NIL has enhanced women’s sports and brought more attention to its best and most charismatic athletes. In addition, it has empowered female athletes and allowed some to earn money to start businesses and pay for graduate school.”

One of the big points made in the article that now looking back has swayed my opinion is that student-athletes decide to stay in school and end up graduating with a degree.

Most college athletes never end up graduating as they have the chance to pro, mostly known in basketball and football, but with NIL, they can easily stay and in some cases, make even more money in college than they would be in the pros.

The best example is the WNBA, where the top players in women’s college basketball may be making more than a typical WNBA player.

One of the points that Bilas hammers throughout the article is about athletes being pressured and asked before NIL where they bought what they had when they were just college athletes. This was made uncomfortable as mentioned in the article multiple times, so with NIL, those questions have stopped for the most part, since there is a better explanation.

When reading that portion of Bilas’s article, it made me think that if I were in the shoes of that athlete, before NIL, I truly don’t think I would want to be in the spotlight or have to answer those questions. At the end of the day, the athlete isn’t supposed to answer those types of questions.

Although Bilas does go into the negatives of NIL, his points didn’t truly catch my attention as much as the article that the New York Times wrote goes into the negatives of NIL and just goes into deeper reasoning.

Following a couple of paragraphs, which were a good leading point towards the issues of NIL, something the ESPN article didn’t do since they went through the good and bad, they finally mentioned NIL as something that isn’t good for college sports.

Although the New York Times article does quickly mention NIL in a positive light, in that same sentence the author changes the thoughts of NIL back to a negative and abusive thing that has been going on in college sports.

The author described NIL as “abusive.” The biggest contrast to be made between Bilas’s article and the New York Times one is that right away, the New York Times just makes it out as bad, which is fine, with many articles making NIL bad for college athletes.

One of the points that both the ESPN article and the New York Times article value the most is the importance of a college degree and how that can be worth more than the money you can earn by playing college football or basketball.

The route that the New York Times article takes is that NIL can affect your chances of earning a college degree. The article mentions that a degree itself is worth $1M.

Both articles dive deep into the rise of women’s sports in college, but only one talks highly of it, which was the ESPN article highlighting the benefits of NIL, but the New York Times takes a different direction.

While the New York Times did mention that NIL has benefited women’s sports, they go on to immediately counter that point with the higher percentage of companies NIL revenue going towards men’s sports, specifically football and basketball.

We went through two articles going into depth about how NIL can benefit or deteriorate college sports, but it is worth going into the specifics as to how NIL works and comparing that to how the other two articles mention NIL.

Sports Illustrated’s FanNation site wrote an article called “What is NIL in college football? Here’s what you need to know.” It essentially dives into when NIL was made official and how important it is within the issues that were discussed between the other two articles.

As we know, NIL stands for Name Image, and Likeness. It benefits both women’s and men’s sports in college athletics, as both the ESPN and New York Times articles. What differentiates this article from the other two is the fact that this one stays completely neutral and only states the facts, something the other two articles didn’t do, in terms of staying neutral, but stating facts that would support their sides.

What the article does make crystal clear, as well as the other two articles is that this is based strictly on business ventures, not how good or bad they are at the sports that they play.

One thing that I thought originally was the fact that NIL was based on how good or bad you are at the sport you play because usually, the big-name athletes are projected to become a pros, which isn’t the case.

Although football and basketball are both sports that usually attract the most NIL deals, with the way that social media is going nowadays, you see gymnasts such as Olivia Dunne earn a big NIL deal, north of $1M.

After reading all three articles, I have come to realize that NIL can be something that will continue to impact college athletes a lot more in terms of the magnitude of deals or just how recruiting works for each athlete.

As the ESPN article goes into how impactful NIL has been along with the negatives here and there, the New York Times article gives you a different view as to what the negatives of college NIL are, something that honestly wasn’t aware of due to my original thoughts before diving into the three articles.

Although the last article isn’t much, it provides the most neutral details as to what NIL exactly is, which will provide a lot of information to the audience that is reading all three articles and finish their reading with the Sports Illustrated article.

Article One: https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/34161311/why-nil-good-college-sports-hurdles-remain

Article Two: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/opinion/college-sports-student-athletes-education.html

Article Three: https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-nil-rule-changes-what-you-need-to-know