Interesting article except that it’s in SI which means it can’t be trusted at all. But the clarifications seem to mostly be aimed at stuff that’s already illegal. And I’ll be interested to see how they take the boosters out of NIL. How can you tell a kid it’s OK to make NIL money from businesses, but oh yeah, the business owners can’t talk to you? If NIL is a thing, then of course exploring NIL opportunities is going to be a big part of a kid’s decision-making. How is he going to do that exploring if businesses can’t talk to him?
I bet they just come up with a bunch more forms to fill out and audit.
As to why would anybody pay $100k for a benchwarmer, well that’s the underlying issue. The boosters are insane. None of this stuff makes sense. They don’t care that they are wrecking college sports even though they love college sports. Perhaps they THINK they love sports, but actually they just love wearing the colors, showing up, backslapping and being pointed out as that big time donor guy.
There are maybe 50 college athletes whose NIL’s are really worth any sort of big money. But the crazy boosters immediately jumped in with fake NIL contracts, and I don’t see how you prove they’re fake.