By Landyn Stacy
As NIL deals go all around, some college athletes have received multi-million dollar offers just to perform doing the things they love.
NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness. It means that college athletes can be paid for the use of their name, image or likeness in advertising and business deals.
Besides receiving college scholarships, a few college athletes are making more than $1 million in NIL deals. Many are making more than $100,000.
Braylon Mullins, a star basketball player from Greenfield-Central High School, recently committed to defending national champion University of Connecticut. His NIL deal currently rates at about $667,000, according to On3, which is a media and technology company that covers youth, high school and college sports and NIL deals.
NIL deals are big money makers and athletes would do anything in the world to try to earn an NIL deal.
Some coaches and students love the fact of making multi-million dollar offers, but by state policy most states are not allowed to have NIL deals at the high school levels. Several states that allow NIL deals for high schoolers are Alaska, California, Colorado and more. Some states that don’t allow NIL deals for high schoolers are Indiana, Florida, Kentucky and many more.
Former head football coach Mr. Chris Overholt and head basketball coach Mr. Mark Detweiler have various opinions on the NIL deals.
NIL deals have taken a big role into the high school level in sports and athletes. It has certainly boosted the athletes’ lives a bunch but will they use their money wisely?
“Sometimes it’s a lot of money at a young age for 17-18 year old kids and they spend it on things when you could save it up,” Overholt said. “And some kids don’t realize it’s your best chance of making money; they could keep the money forever.”
He is not a big fan of NIL for high schoolers.
“I hope it never fully takes place at the high school level and I certainly hope it never comes to Indiana,” Overholt said.
Some people in various other states love the NIL deals because they benefit financially from their fame and their work, but some coaches from all over the United States disagree.
“I hope it never happens because it’s scary what is happening at the college level and it’s a big money grab,” Detweiler said.
The scary part is when kids want to leave their high school sports to get money.
“You have athletes making more than coaches,” Detweiler said.
He continued: “It’s not good and you get pulled into a portal because they’re in for a money grab. There’s no loyalty. … If I yell at a person and they’re not happy, they could leave.”
As NIL deals hit around the world there is some large money going to athletes. For example Shedeur Sanders, quarterback for University of Colorado, makes approximately $6 million. And many more college athletes earn just slightly less than Shedeur Sanders and that’s including athletes like Livvy Dunne, a gymnast for LSU, and Travis Hunter, a two-way starter for Colorado football.
In the late 1980s, star basketball player Damon Bailey played at Bedford North Lawrence High School in southern Indiana. In high school, it is estimated that about 600,000 fans watched him play. This was an average of over 5,000 fans per game. His high school gymnasium was sold out all four years he played before moving on to play at Indiana University.
Closer to home, basketball star Luke Brown helped Blackford sell out nearly all of its games a few years ago.
For those athletes, they were able to just earn full-ride scholarships. Now, in addition to that, top athletes get NIL deals. And that’s why some people don’t like the NIL deals and they think it is very unfair how the NIL deals work.
“There needs to be a fair salary ,,, (but) it is very chaotic right now and there hasn’t been a handle to it,” Coach Detweiler said. “(At) some point the money is going to run out.”
He also said this is the reason why so many players want to transfer because of the money issues going around.
