NIL and College Sports Bribery Practices

That’s me, at my final collegiate event at the NCAA’s, picking up a Final Four trophy with my partner in crime. We had gone from alternates to All-Americans to cap off our senior year at Memphis. After four years and 120+ matches, I graduated with incredible memories in my rearview mirror and was ready to start my career on the ATP tour.

Looking back at my collegiate experiences as a student-athlete, I realized that amongst an array of different characters and nationalities, we all shared one unifying commonality: we were amateurs. Six of my eight teammates were foreigners, and we lived and breathed the same lifestyle, followed the same routine, pursued the same discipline, and ultimately understood that we were some of the luckiest guys in the world.

The Supreme Court ruling that changed the game for good

In light of my background, when I heard a few years later that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of student-athletes getting compensated for their “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL), I was a little apprehensive about what would become of that novelty. To save time, here’s a back of the envelope version of the rule:

“American athletes can make money however they like, as long the University isn’t paying them directly. Foreigners can also make money, so long as the money is coming from their home country and not the United States.”

The NCAA, in tandem with the Supreme Court, would need a long time to discover the imbalances of their decision. As a result, international students were left confused with the lack of clarity on how to navigate the cogs of the new system, and the NCAA knowingly initiated an open-market wage war between universities that would change recruiting practices indefinitely.

It was then that I knew collegiate sports would never be the same again.

When bribing players turned legal

While I was at college, maybe 30% of the top 25 schools were unofficially bribing players. What’s an un-official bribe? Here’s an example:

Coach recruiting:

Example 1: “We’ll line up a sponsor for you that’ll give $50,000 towards funding your career when you graduate, if you commit to [University Name] for 2 years”

Example 2: “Just forge your high school papers and we’ll help get you a place at [University Name], AND we’ll find a sponsor who’ll give you $50,000 in funding when you graduate.”

**The second mostly applied to players who had turned pro while in high school or never finished their diploma, therefore per NCAA rules, ineligible for a scholarship at a D1 college.**

It was illegal to bribe, but ultimately without a paper trail, no one bothered to chase the issues. Players and coaches knew the culprits, and yet there seemed to be an honor code where an “I wont tell if you don’t” mentality developed. The irony was it rarely made a difference, bar maybe one or two players a generation. This happened unofficially across a lot of college sports, stemmed from the law banning Americans AND foreigners from earning any kind of personal income during semesters. But now, coaches in all sports, with larger budgets have been given the green light to legalize their malpractice and use their resources to hunt for top talent.

How will that affect recruiting in the future?

I see a system where well-funded schools will initially compete for top American athletes to lead their lineups, while non-funded schools will hunt for foreign talent. Foreign athletes will have to find sponsorships from their home countries, which NIL law claims is acceptable (though culturally, it’s quite un-European to ask for money if you’re already receiving a free education), or accept positions at well-funded schools, knowing their American teammates are getting paid in addition to their scholarships.

However, coaches and universities will soon realize that you can’t buy wins, and the risk of recruiting students who demand big paydays isn’t worth the reward. Eventually, NIL recruiting practices of promising players big sponsorship deals will be relevant only to football and basketball. Which in reality we can admit is the commercial backbone of college sports.

The first sign of a unifying step in the right direction is Senator Mike Flood’s newly proposed bipartisan bill, which aims to narrow the gap between Americans and foreigners being able to profit from NIL contracts. If this bill passes, recruiting principles will allow for more competitive and level recruiting practices for all athletes.

Even so, players have now become a tradable commodity, and the commercialization of collegiate sport is here to stay.

Am I pro or against the NIL rule?

Money isn’t everything, but if you offered me $50,000+ a year as an 18-year-old, I too would be pretty tempted.

I firmly believe there should be an allowance for athletes to work and/or market themselves the same way non-athletes can while they’re enrolled in education, regardless of their nationality. Athletes should have the right to earn while competing, as long as they’re abiding by the state and federal tax laws of the place where they’re educated. The government would profit from their tax contributions, and students would profit from their endorsements.

Most importantly, it would open up opportunities for athletes to self-fund their professional careers post-college, which is an ongoing challenge, especially for the majority of Olympic sports.

By allowing athletes of all nationalities to benefit from NIL, it will further increase the global demand for roles in the collegiate system, offer a wider pool of recruiting talent for coaches, and allow for better distribution of endorsement deals across minor sports. However, it should be up to the universities to provide bylaws for their recruits that set boundaries before they decide to enroll, so students are well-informed of the NIL process in line with the university's ethos.

Although this is a bit like voting in an election where you’re choosing a regime that’s far from perfect, in the long term and subject to regulatory changes, I am pro-NIL.

NIL Reads:

International students still restricted from NIL deals - World Magazine.

M Flood’s Bill Proposal and Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act

Name, Image, and Likeness – The Foreign Student’s Dilemma