(ThyBlackMan.com) College sports in 2022 is nothing like college sports in 1992 or even 2012. As the college football season begins, the transfer portal has given collegiate athletes more power over their careers than ever before but even more than the transfer portal has been the impact of NIL. It has been a little over a year since July 1, 2021, when the first time ever, collegiate student-athletes could be compensated for the use of their name, image, and likeness, or NIL, without penalty or eligibility issues. Colleges and universities still cannot pay athletes that help them bring in millions and millions of dollars but those athletes can earn money in their pockets in new and different ways that they never could before. One year since new rules for college athletes regarding NIL, there are still a lot of unknowns as well as interesting results for athletes and schools due to this new era of college sports.
In the year since NIL has been implemented, there have been a lot of unique combinations between college athletes and businesses doing NIL deals. One of the more interesting names in college football is Dresser Winn. Winn is the starting quarterback for FCS football program, Tennessee-Martin, and he was the first known athlete to ink a deal with a political campaign after a partnership deal to endorse local district attorney candidate Colin Johnson. Perhaps Winn’s endorsement helped as Johnson was elected as new District Attorney General for a Tennessee judicial district in a close campaign earlier this month. It will be even harder to say politics and sports don’t mix after that. Another interesting NIL-related partnership was the Florida Panthers of the NHL partnering to offer a NIL deal to all female athletes at Florida Atlantic University. The Panthers also committed to equal pay for all athletes in the program. Another unique team-oriented NIL agreement came with HBCU Howard University as Howard became the first Historically Black College or University to sign a teamwide Name, Image and Likeness deal back in November 2021 when it agreed to a deal with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving.
The fear of college athletes earning money from the work they put into college sports definitely has racism as a component of that fear and unjustified reasoning. The largest revenue collegiate sports, college football and men’s college basketball, feature largely Black athletes as stars and the faces of the sport on an annual basis while being unpaid for largely PWIs, Predominantly White Institutions, while white coaches and largely white athletic departments profit. This remains a topic of discussion even today. However, it would be a mistake to think that college athletes are using their newfound money from NIL for strictly selfish purposes. One notable example is former Texas Longhorns college basketball player Andrew Jones, a leukemia survivor, who partnered with the V Foundation to raise money for cancer research and donated 10% of his Name, Image, and Likeness earnings to the well-known cancer research foundation. Former Texas A&M football star Trayveon Williams is helping the next generation understand NIL by co-teaching a NIL-focused class as an adjunct professor at Texas A&M’s School of Law in the spring of 2023.
This is the early phase of the NIL era and even legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban has gotten himself in verbal battles regarding NIL and how it is being regulated. It will take time to regulate NIL but it is important that the longtime one-sided nature of college sports when college athletes were supposed to be content with a “free ride” and little else has disappeared for good. We are definitely in a completely new era of college sports one year after NIL.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
Football? Basketball? Sport Tips or Feedback – One can contact me at; MarkH@ThyBlackMan.com.
