Oliver Luck was a two-time All-American quarterback who guided West Virginia to a win over the Florida Gators in the 1981 Peach Bowl.
But during the offseason, Luck was like many college students hoping to make extra money working for a coal company with many of his Mountaineers teammates.
“It was real work, and while we didn’t go into the mines we had to clean stuff and pull cable,” Luck said. “A lot of kids today don’t have summer jobs. They don’t know what it means to go to the golf course at 7 a.m. because you’re on the grounds crew and you’ve got to cut the greens before the golfers come out or deliver newspapers.”
Offseason jobs were typical among college athletes during Luck’s era, but a lot has changed in the last 40 years as the NCAA and institutions took a hard-line stance against those opportunities, fearing possible eligibility issues.
That changed last year when the Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled against the NCAA in the NCAA v. Alston case, which opened the door for athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness, or NIL.
While the move opened the door for limitless financial opportunities for college athletes, it also came with its own set of challenges and issues. With little to no guidance from the NCAA and ambiguous state laws, the NIL landscape has become something of a free-for-all with supposed under-the-table deals as recruiting enticement.
Instead of clarity, NIL’s birth on July 1, 2021 has created confusion. Some would even call it chaos.
‘Wild West’
Darren Heitner, a Florida sports attorney, has been working with college athletes to help guide them through the NIL process. He was instrumental in crafting the state’s NIL legislation which went into effect a year ago this month with Florida being one of nearly a dozen other states to enact their version of the law.
“It has developed very much in the way that I suspected,” explained Heitner. “Which is initial extreme interest among the masses and many brands to sort of being the first to market and establish relationships with athletes, then to find new and innovative ways for boosters who pool their resources in a fashion that would benefit the athletes.
“It took some time, but we’re at the point where the more established brands, the Fortune 500 companies, are very much getting involved.”
The Power Five leads the way in total NIL compensation according to the latest figures provided by Opendorse, a company that connects businesses with college athletes. The Big Ten is at the top, followed by the Big 12, Big East, Pac-12, SEC and ACC.
After a short pro career with the Houston Oilers, Luck worked as an executive with several franchises in NFL Europe and as president and general manager of the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer. He also served as athletics director at West Virginia (2010-14) and an executive position with the NCAA (2014-18).
“I’m not sure anybody had any idea how the marketplace would roll out,” said Luck. “The fact that student-athletes have the opportunity to maximize their value by monetizing their NIL is what I think most folks intended.”
While most states debated enacting their version of NIL legislation, the NCAA provided little clarity, with many in the organization hoping for interference from the government. NCAA president Mark Emmert has repeatedly said it would take the help of federal lawmakers to enact sweeping national legislation. When that didn’t happen, the NCAA released a vague guideline for NIL.
That ambiguity leaves college administrators and coaches with little or no idea of what to expect.
Tom McMillen is the CEO of LEAD1 Association, which represents the athletics directors of the 130 programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“We hear from many ADs about how chaotic it is out there,” said McMillen. “Nobody knows what the rules of the road are. They use the expression the Wild West. There’s no policing going on.”
Collective headache
An unintended consequence has been the rise of the collectives.
Collectives are school-specific groups created by boosters which allow them to pool their money to pay college athletes.
“I’m not sure very many student-athletes are capable of going out and doing all the things you have to do to monetize,” said Luck. “Because the universities were at arm’s length and nature abhors a vacuum, the collectives popped up.”
There are 74 collectives, according to the Business of College Sports, with some schools featuring multiple groups. The Gator Collective, Gator Guard and MarketPryce Florida are associated with the University of Florida while Rising Spear and Micconope 1851 represent Florida State athletes. Bring Back the U is for University of Miami athletes and UCF has Mission Control.
Most collectives work as third-party entities, separate from their specific schools. In some states, however, the schools can help guide their athletes to collectives.
Some of those organizations reach beyond simple meet-and-greets and into the grey areas where NIL deals are recruiting incentives.
When Miami booster John Ruiz tweeted that his company, LifeWallet, had signed former Kansas State guard Nijel Pack, who was transferring, to a two-year deal worth $800,000 it raised eyebrows.
“I could not have predicted that we would have seen specific individuals, who you classify as boosters, prominently and publicly stating the offers they’re presenting to particular individuals,” said Heitner.
Ruiz also was instrumental in bringing Hanna and Haley Cavinder from Fresno State to Miami after signing the twin sisters to NIL deals.
Texas A&M and coach Jimbo Fisher came under fire after reports of a $30 million NIL fund surfaced, drawing criticism from Alabama coach Nick Saban among others.
“We were second in recruiting last year and A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team and made a deal for name, image and likeness,” Saban said at the time.
He later apologized to Fisher for his remarks.
“What the collectives need to do is to stay as far away as they possibly can from prospective student-athletes, high school recruits,” Luck said. “That, to me, is not appropriate behavior for a collective.”
In response to concerns over some NIL deals that appeared closer to pay-for-play, the NCAA’s Board of Directors issued guidance in May reassuring the role of collectives. Among those ideas presented is that collectives can’t promise deals as recruiting incentives. The BOD directed the NCAA’s enforcement staff to review these violations.
The NCAA’s enforcement staff recently sat down with Ruiz and Miami officials to review their NIL deals, the first inquiry into a college athletics department.
“Back in the day, it was the bag man,” said Luck. “It’s a very similar quandary for whoever enforces the rules. It doesn’t matter if it’s some new entity that serves FBS football or the NCAA. It’s still a challenge.
“The work that the collectives have done is solid and a big benefit to student-athletes and I don’t see them going away at all.”
The next frontier
Some want the rules tweaked so that the individual schools can assume a more significant role in collectives.
“The long-term solution is to bring this back into the school and let the school manage all this,” said McMillen. “You can have a whole licensing arm in the school and they can be working on deals. The long-term solution is not to have collectives.
“The idea of having these outside the school’s scope and management is illogical and certainly would never happen in the NBA or the NFL. They would never allow their players to be taken over by third-party boosters. The system will have to evolve and I’m not sure the collectives will be here for long.”
Alabama was among nearly a dozen states to enact NIL legislation last July. Since then, however, legislators pushed to repeal the law after the NCAA adopted a more relaxed interim policy. Many states have amended their current regulations, including Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.
Florida lawmaker Rep. Chip LaMarca (R-Lighthouse Point) sponsored an amendment to the state’s law, but it failed to make the last legislative calendar. Another attempt could come in the spring of 2023.
Staff Writer Edgar Thompson contributed to this report.
