Hall of Fame coach Steve Spurrier offered his perspective on how college football has changed in the NIL era. He also gave his suggestion on how to fix what he described as “a very unfair sport.”
Speaking on Another Dooley Noted Podcast with Pat Dooley, the former Florida and South Carolina coach brought up the unbalanced market at the moment. Using UCF as an example, he noted that the program is not capable of competing financially with some of the bigger schools in the SEC and Big Ten.
“It is a very unfair sport right now,” Spurrier said. “Scott Frost, the new UCF coach, he had some comments in the paper here recently and he said, ‘we’re a school that can’t give out the big money. We don’t have multi-millionaire boosters.’ A lot of these schools have billionaire guys that say, ‘Let me know how much you need.’ He said, ‘We don’t have it, so we’re not gonna be able to recruit these guys or if we do get a real good player, he’s gone the next year.’
“You would think they gotta put a cap on it. I don’t care if it’s $40 million or $20 million. Just put a limit of what people can spend and try to make it a little bit fair. But it’s gonna be the some old schools up there every year.”
A federal bill was introduced in early April that would replace the NCAA. A salary cap was one of the proposals in the bill and allow NIL funds and revenue directly shared with the schools to be distributed “equally among all student athletes of such institutions within the ACSA.”
Lately, NIL and the transfer portal have taken center stage after quarterback Nico Iamaleava left Tennessee amid negotiations for a new NIL contract. He was reportedly seeking $4 million deal for the upcoming season, a significant upgrade from his alleged pre-existing $2.2 million deal.
There’s not many schools who can offer those kinds of numbers, but Iamaleava ultimately landed at UCLA days after his split from the Vols. It’s unclear what the Bruins offered him, but former UCLA quarterback Joey Aguilar reportedly signed a deal with Tennessee that is worth “seven figures less” than the $2.2 million it was going to pay Iamaleava.
Although Steve Spurrier would believes an NIL salary cap would help even the playing field somewhat, he acknowledged that the usual suspects such as Alabama, Ohio State and others will still likely be the top teams most years. He also noted that sometimes the teams spending the most money aren’t necessarily the most successful ones.
“Although, some of them that spend a lot of money don’t win big,” he said. “Miami and Texas A&M are big spenders. Cam Ward certainly was a good one. Anyway, I hope we’ll agree to something. Just put a cap on it and give everybody somewhat of a fair chance. It’s still going to be the schools with the most money are going to be the favorites.”
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