NIL isn't actually a Wild West, and other thoughts on where we are right now:
Matt Brown
May 03, 2022
Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.
Hey, real quick:
Tips to make sure each and every Extra Points newsletter lands in your inbox: On mobile, be sure to add us to your VIP list; on Outlook, add us to your favorites; on Gmail, move us to your primary inbox.
I understand how easy it can be to beat a joke or a metaphor completely into the ground. Take it from me, the guy who made "Notre Dame went 4-8 jokes" a good four years after the rest of the internet moved on to a new bit.
But friends, I think we can think of another way to describe NIL without resorting to calling it the "Wild West." Like this story did. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.
Both the market-driven NIL marketplace (for social-media endorsements, coaching clinics, etc) and bagman-driven NIL marketplace (uh, everything else) are almost completely unregulated, sure. Like the proverbial Wild West, there's very little, if any, moderating influence from any formalized rule-enforcement bodies.
So I get why people go for the metaphor. But it's not perfect. In a true Wild West situation, a coach upset at another coach for tampering wouldn't complain to the press...they'd lumber down to the tavern and try to shoot the guy. Law enforcement's ability to enforce anything would be so sporadic that schools would flaunt all the other rules, from scholarship limits to academic eligiblity. And shoot, in the True Wild West, circa, oh, 1890-1908 or so...Princeton and Yale would be good.
That's not where we are right now, right? Let's just say it's an unregulated market.
On that note, rather than turning this into six other newsletters, here are a few other takeaways from a turbulent two weeks in the college athlete NIL world:
Subscribe to Premium Membership to read the rest.
Become a paying subscriber of Premium Membership to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
Already a paying subscriber? Sign In