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🌊 How Rogue Billionaires Took Over College Sports
And how NIL is nothing what it was supposed to be.
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By Max Towey
In July 2021, the college sports world turned upside down. For the first time in NCAA history, players could monetize their “name, image, and likeness” – their “NIL.”
A gold rush ensued – but not in the way the NCAA expected. In the three and a half years since, rogue nonprofits and billionaires have used NIL as a Trojan Horse to pay players directly, transforming college athletics.
If you watch March Madness this weekend, you’ll be watching millionaires: Two of March Madness’ biggest stars, Duke’s Cooper Flagg and UConn’s Paige Bueckers, have NIL valuations of $4.8M and $1.4M, respectively. But neither one of them is really getting paid for their NIL; they’re getting paid to play, with NIL used as a cover.
We spent weeks diving into this ecosystem, talking to agents, athletes, and donors, to understand what NIL really means, what college athletes are earning, and how. What we uncovered was a story of how NIL devolved into a multi-billion-dollar scam.
And to understand that scam, we have to start with college football.
It all started in the fall of 1869.
In 1869, four years after the end of the Civil War, the first college football game took place. It was actually the first official football game on American soil in general, and in it, Rutgers beat Princeton in a 6-4 barn burner. Decades later, after World War I, college football exploded in popularity, especially in the South and Midwest, where it became dominant.
Today college football remains a unique sport: It’s the only sport on Earth that fills multiple 100,000-seat venues every weekend. In fact, eight of the world’s 10 biggest stadiums are college football stadiums (India and North Korea claim the other two). These games feature unparalleled passion, pageantry, and rivalries.
And it’s not played by paid professionals – but by unpaid amateurs.
For decades, college athletes couldn’t get paid for their play or even paid for their personal brands despite generating billions in revenue and commanding TV ratings that only the NFL can top. While there’s a long history of under-the-table payments that dates back to the early 20th century and involved some of the sport’s biggest names, such dealings were confined to the shadows.
The NCAA ruled that system with an iron fist. It shot down every revenue share, NIL, and salary cap proposal. College athletes, they argued, got paid in scholarship money and stipends. Anything more would defy their student-athlete label.
In June 2021, the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA in NCAA v. Alston. In doing so, it punctured a hole in the NCAA’s ironclad rules on monetary benefits for athletes. Smelling blood in the water, states began to pass laws that would allow their collegiate athletes to make money from their NIL. Florida accelerated the arms race by passing a law that let players monetize their NIL for the 2021 season. The NCAA saw the writing on the wall: If it pushed back, the Supreme Court would likely rule against it. If it let this patchwork of laws proceed, the sport would become a mess. So it caved and allowed all college athletes to make money from their NIL.
What followed was chaos.
To understand the evolution of NIL, we interviewed a top NIL reporter, a college football sports agent, and an anonymous booster at a major school. We also interviewed a unique member of the Roca community: Brandon Wimbush, a former star quarterback at Notre Dame who set the university’s single-season rushing TD record for QBs. More recently, Wimbush founded Mogl, a successful NIL company that landed him on this year’s Forbes 30-Under-30 sports list next to Jayson Tatum and Caitlin Clark.
“NIL is not what it was meant to be,” Wimbush told Roca.
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Editor’s Note
Very curious to read your takes on this one. Are college sports in a better or worse place than a few years back? Let us know by replying here.
Also, in case you missed anything during this hectic week, here are our five most recent stories:
Speaking of feedback, you all sent some interesting thoughts on yesterday’s story, our deep-dive into the Zizian Cult. Here are some of those.
John from Glens Falls wrote:
I thought this was very informative and quite interesting. I wouldn't call it a change of pace as it directly relates to current events. What a story, you guys seem to really find them.
Margie wrote:
Thank you for this story. Had been looking for more info, and this presented it in a chronological and understandable way.
And Patrick added:
I found this story interesting. What a bizarre turn of events in these young people’s lives. Their dive into dark thoughts and confusion lead them to become murderers. Mental illness unchecked and dealt with resulted in multiple deaths and ruination of many families. Sad, sad, sad.
That’s all for today. See you back here tomorrow!
–Max and Max