How to (Legally) Pay a College Football Player

EPISODE 139: A not-quite-open market.

You may have noticed that we’ve decided to do a series of episodes devoted to finding out what’s happening, on the ground, as unpaid “amateurism” in college sports is very dramatically falling apart.

We interviewed the antitrust lawyer who beat the NCAA before the Supreme Court, establishing that athletes can now sign marketing deals — monetizing their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) for the first time. 

Then we took a call from Paris, in the middle of the Olympics, from the head coach of USA Diving, who’s terrified that colleges will adapt to these new rules and pressures by killing off non-revenue-generating Olympic sports.

But the biggest revenue-generator, of course, is college football.

By far.

And on Saturday, with the University of Miami kicking off its season-opener against the University of Florida, its hated rival, I wanted to find out how a school is fighting, and funding, a football recruiting war, in the present.

Which brings me to my visit with Meadowlark’s own Miami booster, Mike Ryan, who takes us inside an organization known as an NIL collective. And we call up On3 reporter Andy Staples, a former national champion o-lineman at the University of Florida, to understand the future of a not-quite-open market.

(Also: Jaden Rashada, LifeWallet, and stone crabs.)

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Capitalistically,

Pablo