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There were multiple complaints.

One of the key ones is that if a non-athlete student also happened to be a musician, even if the student was enrolled on scholarship in a university's music program, nothing stopped that student from playing paid gigs on the side. Or if a non-athlete student had a prominent side gig running a social media influencer account, or producing a popular podcast, etc, nothing stopped them from profiting from that side gig.

But there was a situation where a football player had a podcast (IIRC) and had to choose between his podcast on the side and continuing to play football, because it was deemed that he was profiting off his athletic prowess. That was a major double standard.

Beyond that there was the EA sports issue, which destroyed a popular video game needlessly, and all that would be necessary to keep it would be to actually let the players earn money for consenting to their NIL to be used in the game. There's the idea that stars would actually be able to do endorsements or other things on the side. Essentially it's allowing them to profit from being themselves, without actually making them employees of the university.

None of these fundamentally change the student-athlete paradigm, whereas pay-for-play does. At that point they're employees, and that's a whole different hornet's nest.

Oh I understand all of that. And those motivations are true of some of the players, but hardly true of all of them.

Right now, currently, many of the state legislatures have the specific goal of destroying the amateur athletics model.  Many of them have current and ongoing proposals to force the academic institutions within their own jurisdictions into direct pay-for-play.  And if even one state does it, they will all have to do it, to keep their own institutions from being disadvantaged.  Exactly the same way the NIL dominoes toppled.

There are powerful political movements pushing this agenda for the purpose of destroying college football amateurism, and for them, NIL was just the first step, because it was easy to execute.

Their entire goal has been to professionalize college amateur athletics "for the good of the athlete."

And they've already succeeded.  This was the inevitable next state, once the state legislatures decided they needed to act on behalf of the athletes.

I have no problem with them destroying the amateur model. Having a billion dollar industry where the most important employees aren't getting paid because you magically determine they aren't employees is theft. 

That's certainly the reasoning of the legislators that are in the process of killing the amateur model. 

That said, a set of rules and guidelines on how we want this to operate is important for the sanctity of the sport.

There is no "sanctity of the sport" once it becomes professionalized.  The NFL salary cap doesn't work in the players' favor, it works in the owners' favor.  That's not "sanctity."

I'm not talking about some sort of fairness for all or caps on what is spent. I'm more talking about the chicanery that may result in trying to pay guys to leave other teams, or sit out games, or anything that is hurting the legitimacy of the game. We already had Roy Manning supposedly recruiting for USC while working for Oklahoma. And as far as anyone can tell, that may not even be against the rules.

Ah, gotcha.  We'd been speaking so much within the context of the new, financial side of things, I thought that's where you were headed.

Well, as we've discussed I don't think it's going to end up being much of a big deal, and you do, but one rule in place to try to limit the poaching, is the requirement to sit out a year after the one freebie transfer.  I think that will act as enough of a deterrent to keep it from being total free agency.  I also think that the school-specific NIL contracts will be written with incentives for staying put.

But, as I've stated many times, I believe it's going to take a while for things to settle out and reach an equilibrium.   We've probably got a couple or three years of some really wacky things about to unfold.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.