New Orleans The hypocrisy of college sports is on widescreen display as the pro football draft tees up. We’ve talked before about the wildness of the transfer portal and the new monied NIL world of name, image and likeness for athletes. Of course, it’s not just football that’s impacted, basketball is also in flux with teams built overnight from losers to winners on the portal, and money greasing the path to make it all happen. Boosters want winners and seem more than willing to pay those that play.
The myth of the student-athlete may linger for some, but most of us haven’t believed this, especially for the big sports and big schools, for some time. It’s kind of refreshing not to have endure the blathering about how sports in these schools builds character and so forth. Riley Leonard the Notre Dame quarterback in the 2025 national NCAA football championship speaks to the new frankness saying,
“I’m a huge advocate of school and stuff, but I don’t remember too much of what I learned in the classroom. But when my real money had to be spent and invested, I was sure locked in.”
He and the other championship contending quarterback then, Ohio State’s Will Howard, both made about $1.5 million that year. When drafted they made less, both about $1.1 million on four-year contracts with the Colts and Steelers respectively, taking a pay cut.
This was famously the case for women’s basketball star, Caitlin Clark, at Iowa where she was making millions in her last year, deservedly for pulling in sold out crowds and national ranking. She signed with the WNBA for a pittance, hardly six figures and far less than the seven figures she was making at Iowa. All of this forced the new collective bargaining agreement for the women to skyrocket their wages, though they will be nowhere near the average $10 million per year that ballers in NBA are paying now.
This asymmetric situation has star players in the NFL draft at 23, 24, and 25-years-old and fighting to stay in school as long as possible. This was certainly the case for Carson Beck, who portaled over to the University of Miami, for an estimated $3.5 million in 2025. It’s also why Trinidad Chambliss is celebrating a court victory that will allow him another year behind center at the University of Mississippi, where he is estimated to make $6 million. As 2025 national champion Ohio State’s Howard said, “You can create generational wealth now, and it doesn’t have to start in the NFL.”
In basketball, the one-and-done, NIL, and portals has reshaped both college ball and the pros. One of the stars of the New Orleans Pelicans this year, was 19-year-old Jeremiah Fears, after one-year at Oklahoma. He joins Zion Williamson, a one-year wonder at Duke, who has been with the Pels as a star for seven years already.
The NFL television deal could easily raise the starting salaries to be able to cream off more undergraduates who are not going to be top 10 draft picks. I would bet the NLFPA will ask for one-million starting salaries for quarterbacks and half-million for other positions in their next collective agreement. The NCAA, the college sport regulator, as usual is one step behind the players and the market now that their bubble dream has been burst. They hoped Congress would save them, but many of the boosters are also big political donors, so that’s not likely. Trump threw something up against the wall, as is his want, but it landed irrelevantly. The NCAA is trying to stack their deck by using age-based eligibility standards, though I can’t quite fathom how that will help them. Reportedly, they also want to make college athletes ineligible if they have registered for the professional draft. I would bet the pros would simply delay their draft registrations a minute. They also want to penalize coaches and colleges severely if they allow “ghost transfers” to stop recruiting efforts for players to jump to schools outside of the portal process. These moves all seem like simply grasping at air, rather than real solutions.
Once money pollutes amateur sports, the only real solution is to make everything professional and then regulate the payments at each level in order to equalize the playing field. Anything else, just seems like play pretend and posturing.