College football has a serious problem on its hands. After years of players having no ability to earn money as a result of their status as athletes, as well as little freedom of movement between schools, they now have arguably the most free and open system in sports.
Athletes can now move between schools each year, at will. Think you can get more Name, Image and Likeliness money elsewhere? The floodgates are open. Though of course, as Nico Iamaleava can tell you, searching for money doesn’t always work out.
There are some benefits to this both for players, and for certain schools who can now pull recruits away from big-name programs with better financial offers. But it’s also created a system where the “student-athlete” designation is essentially a farce. And former NFL player Jack Brewer thinks the sport needs a complete overhaul in order to return to how it used to be.
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE – NOVEMBER 23: Nico Iamaleava #8 of the Tennessee Volunteers looks on prior to the game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the UTEP Miners at Neyland Stadium on November 23, 2024 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)
Former NFL Player Warns ‘Student Athletes’ Disappearing
Brewer, who played in the NFL from 2002 to 2006, spoke to Fox News Digital about the new era of NIL in college football and how, in his mind, it’s negatively impacted the sport and the players.
“We need to get back to student-athletes,” Brewer said.
“If a person wants the freedom to make as much money as they want and can leverage the sport to do that, they should absolutely be able to — and they can, in our professional leagues. But there’s no place for an unlimited amount of money to be paid to people in college sports. They should be student-athletes, which is what they signed up to be.”
And this is the delicate balance that college athletics is facing in the modern era; players are putting their health and careers on the line, in a sport that’s generating billions of dollars, and schools and administrators have historically taken advantage of it.
READ: Big Ten Conference Dominating On And Off Field, With Massive Revenue Increase
The system we have now though, all but eliminates the “student” part of “student-athlete.” Brewer agrees.
“You’ll continue to see students who are no longer focused on school because their incentive for going to college is no longer to get an education, but to make money,” Brewer said. “It’s not right for universities to exploit this loophole, recruiting student-athletes who no longer have to focus on being students.”
Where critics like Brewer are right is that the unrestricted transfer system and complete lack of regulation in NIL give college football players more freedom than virtually any other sport. NFL players have contracts; they aren’t able to switch between teams at the drop of a hat, even after the NIL distribution based on a presumed commitment.
President Donald Trump has reportedly discussed an executive order to put a stop to unrestricted NIL after speaking to legendary head coach Nick Saban. The free-for-all era seems to be coming to a rapid end.
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