Even without gambling, IMHO, the NIL and the transfer portal is killing college sports. Meant to be recreational activities for students seeking an education, offering scholarships caused the first chip in the foundation of amateur sports. But, at least for a good number of decades, students-athletes were expected to attend class, and monitored. Gradually, those expectations and monitoring slipped to the point that the percentage of annual graduates dropped to a shameful number. That was the second HUGE chip. Along came the transfer portal, allowing athletes to change institutions annually, if not more often, initially, to seek higher profile programs, by which to improve their draft potential for professional sports. HUGE chip number 3. Then, the NIL gave them even more incentive to move from highest bidder to highest bidder. The foundation is on the brink of collapse.
You may think that the schools aren't paying these kids, and, technically, they aren't. But, every Power 5 institution has created an internal group to court donors for their athletes to promote their products/services, even though, in many, many cases, very passively, i.e., the athlete does not have to do anything except let the donor include their photo in promotional material. One local Power 5 school was able to secure a $25,000/year NIL deal for
every member of their women's basketball team. And they are only mildly competitive in their conference. Move on to men's basketball and football, and those guys are striking individual multi-million dollar deals. Go to class? Hahahahahahahaha. Get a degree? Why? The next liberal move is to totally devalue college degrees, by no longer requiring degrees for positions that NEED degreed employees. I expect that many states will eliminate the requirement for licensed professionals to be degreed to obtain a license for their fields, like engineers, architects, heaven forbid - even physicians
I was born 20 years too soon.
