None of this has anything to do with NIL.
Y'all know what NIL is, right? It's not pay for play. It's not union, it's not scale. It's not a contract with the school, by law in many states it CAN'T involve the school.
And the state legislatures have absolute authority to override the NCAA any time they see fit. There was no solution the NCAA could implement, that would have appeased the powers that be in the state legislatures. They WANTED to assert this authority. It was ALWAYS going to happen.
Because what the NCAA had in place, for decades upon decades, WAS ILLEGAL.
yup. it's against the law to restrict an adult (18 year old) from legally making money by entering into promotional/advertising contracts using his own name image and likeness.
what it SHOULD be is for established star players like a Blake Corum or Bijan Robinson or Caleb Williams or CJ Stroud to make money off their popularity which was
earned on the field by being high level really good college football players. Which that's great, I'm all for that. Dudes like that have earned it. They are true CFB stars, makes sense that companies would want to sign them for advertising deals.
A&M turned it into this bastardized thing where they have used it to
buy recruiting classes and promise snot nosed 17-18 year old HS kids who haven't done
jacksh*t yet buckooo bucks all in the hopes of the kid
might be good. What happens is you have the older kids who weren't around for HS NIL deals who had to earn their stripes being resentful or the "lowly" 2* or 3* kids of this new NIL era that wind up playing like 5*'s being resentful because they had to
earn their NIL deals by actually being good at football. And it creates a situation where you just have a bunch of mercenaries who wouldn't have picked your school before but are only picking it for the money. Which doesn't work. These kids are going to college still at the end of the day. They aren't pros. Lot of them probably going to wind up not even liking the area, school, or coaches they picked and only signed the LOI on NSD for the NIL deal.