RALEIGH, N.C. — And Happy First Anniversary to college athletics’ NIL era. Roses, chocolates, maybe a Cameo message from your favorite college athlete all make for an appropriate celebratory gift. A year ago Friday, on July 1, 2021, the NCAA granted college athletes the right to profit off of their name, image and likeness.
And what a year it has been.
Just think of all the joy it has brought us: college athletes on Cameo, offering silly videos for money. The fun in deciphering whether some of these especially large sums we hear about from time to time — $9.5 million for a football recruit! — are grounded in reality. The epic Jimbo Fisher press conference, in which he suggested Nick Saban’s mama should’ve slapped him more as a child, given Saban’s assertion that Texas A&M had bought its entire football recruiting class.
