College football is currently facing a pretty significant problem with regard to the NCAA’s name, image, and likeness rules. And one former college head coach thinks the problem could be seen coming from a mile away.
Under the name, image, and likeness rules that went in place a few years ago, college athletes are now allowed to profit from their fame through endorsement deals and brand partnerships, but that was not supposed to be a factor in recruiting. But during a recent interview with Outkick’s Trey Wallace, former college football coach Dan Mullen indicated that everyone knew this was going to be an issue.
“I think if you go back to coaches, everyone knew this was coming,” Mullen said according to On3. “I go back – I was on the college football oversight committee around then, 2017-2018. NIL was coming up, and transfer portal was coming up. … I said from the coach’s perspective, the transfer portal how you wanna do it moving forward is gonna basically lead to free agency. And they were like, ‘No it’s just taking paperwork away from the NCAA, instead of us having to approve everything.’ I said, ‘That’s the intent – which is the right intent – but it’s gonna lead to free agency.’ I said NIL is solely going to be about recruiting. They were like, ‘Well, it’s not going to have anything to do with recruiting.’
“The problem comes – I think the coaches saw this coming down the road. A lot of times, administrators didn’t because they weren’t dealing with the daily basis of what goes on. I think a lot of times, you could see it happening, you could see what was gonna come.”
The larger problem is that the NCAA put no real guidelines in place for NIL and there is no federal legislation regulating it. As a result, it’s been a sort of free-for-all, even though everyone could see the issues coming.
It’s a mess, but the warning signs were always there.
[On3]
