College football fans are up in arms about Deion Sanders‘ roster purge at the University of Colorado, and rightfully so, as it’s alarming to see that many players depart a program at one time.
But instead of just blaming Deion, critics should be directing their attention and venom to college football and those who transformed it from amateur athletics into big business.
And it’s not a recent phenomenon either.
As the sport gradually, yet eagerly, transitioned from its simple DI roots and heavily contested ranking system to the BCS, FBS, Power 5 and College Football Playoff system, gone was whatever innocence was left in the game. In its place stepped lucrative media rights deals, six-figure sponsorships and a new hierarchy no longer ruled by the NCAA.
College football became an elitist, quasi-caste system led by university presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors and media executives who crafted college football into the money-making machine that it is now.
And while the strategy took decades to evolve, two recent events thrust college sports into its current state.
In 2018, the transfer portal was adopted by the NCAA as a way to “help compliance administrators track transfers to better organize the process.”
It has been tweaked multiple times since then, and athletes have used it as a tool for improving their athletic standing and more recently, their earning potential.
Then, on June 21st, 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA was violating antitrust law by placing limits on the education-related benefit that schools and universities can provide to athletes. That propelled the system’s revenue-generating powers into overdrive for the decision enabled schools to provide unlimited compensation as long as it was related in some way to their education.
“The NCAA is not above the law,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the time. “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
That ruling gave birth to NIL and the arrival of the moment athletes like Ed O’Bannon, Jeremy Bloom, and Kain Colter fought so hard for.
Ironically, on July 1st, 2021 the first recorded NIL deal took place at Jackson State where Deion Sanders was head coach.
Since that time, college athletes have pitched, negotiated and secured NIL deals that have created financial stability former college athletes could never attain.
And many have done it by transferring to a new school that provides them with more visibility both on and off the field of play.
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