NIL Takes a Backseat

With so many things on the plates of coaching staffs, how can player payments possibly be prioritized?

With recruiting, retaining, and roster math consuming every hour, NIL often waits its turn.

I talk to a lot of college coaches. When the offseason comes around, I mostly tell them to go pro if they can. Experience an uninterrupted vacation. Have a set schedule. Avoid the fire drill and chaos of a college program. Deal with 25–44-year-olds (shoutout Philip Rivers) instead of 18–24-year-olds. Save yourself the headache.

The NFL schedule has clear gaps—some mandated by the NFL Players Association, others a byproduct of not winning enough games. The college schedule mostly has no gaps. If you’re not coaching, you’re recruiting. If you’re not recruiting, you’re retaining. If you’re not retaining, you’re working on professional development. If you’re not working on professional development, you’re preparing for the season or the offseason, etc. You get the picture.

There are in-home visits, school visits, official visits, unofficial visits, visits for freshmen, visits for sophomores, visits for juniors, visits for seniors, visits for transfers, visits for JUCO athletes. So many players. So many options.

With all of the attention paid to the different demands on coaches, NIL conversations mostly take a back seat. In most professions—and certainly for professional athletes—there is at least some clarity around what one is set to earn next season. The college athletics landscape is something different altogether. I’ve reached out to a GM, a collective, and an athletic administrator responsible for NIL to initiate dialogue on retaining a player and haven’t received so much as an acknowledgment of my outreach. Meanwhile, opposing GMs have gladly fielded my communications. Just because coaches and personnel decision-makers don’t like NIL or are uncertain about future roster projections doesn’t mean they should be unresponsive to advisors representing their athletes. The lack of responsiveness is just one of many signals of the industry’s immaturity.

There are several younger personnel people in college athletics who have been fast-tracked into their roles not necessarily because of quality, but because of the immediate vacancies that needed filling when July 1, 2025, brought hundreds of new personnel and NIL roles online across Division I athletics. I have long said that the lack of professionalism displayed across college athletics would be absolutely intolerable in the “real world” or the standard corporate universe (see: $50+ million buyouts). Rarely are there performance reviews, organizational behavior efficiencies sought out, or management learnings integrated into staff leadership. The head coach rules with an iron fist, and the emperor is never wearing any clothes (but don’t say anything about that).

So with a “win now” mentality abundantly pervasive across nearly the entire college athletics landscape, why would NIL be top of mind for players, coaches, and personnel executives? While Lavoisier’s law of conservation of mass states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, roster spots can no longer be created nor destroyed either. 105 is 105 is 105 for football, and 15 is 15 is 15 for basketball. The revenue-sharing cap—and a school’s ability to operate within it—will ultimately determine how likely mid-tier and lower-tier players are to be retained.

While many fans clutch their pearls and abhor the freedom athletes take in transferring, almost nothing is said about schools not renewing scholarships or declining to welcome athletes back. If a player doesn’t live up to their perceived potential or price tag, they could be on the chopping block. Of course, those stories aren’t widely circulated, because reporting on them might empower and embolden support for athletes who are finally claiming a fraction of the rights they deserve—rights that still come with far more restrictions than those governing coaching departures.

Only marginal attention is paid to football NIL as the portal opens in January. The April basketball portal opening renders NIL conversations an absolute afterthought at this point in the season. It’s incredibly inefficient not to retain players in-season or to sign them to multi-year agreements, but that’s where we are in this unpredictable new NIL world. The only constant will continue to be change.