When you’re buying a house, how do you find just the right home for you? You might make your decision based on the neighborhood or how close it is from a local school or the distance from your place of work, but I don’t think anyone has ever been paid to buy a house; they make their decision with their heart. 

Made official July 1, 2021, collegiate athletes obtained the right of making profit off of their image and likeness. In college sports you’ll hear the term, “N.I.L.” This stands for name, image, and likeness and based on an athlete’s N.I.L.  value they can receive compensation solely based on their popularity. Bronny James, son of the superstar basketball player Lebron James has the highest value amongst all college athletes with a whopping sum of five million dollars. Bronny is only 19 years old and attends the University of Southern California, he annually earns 6.1 million dollars, he makes 57 percent more than current N.B.A. players.

With the theme of college athletes being paid to decide their choice of committing to a college, it makes you think how did schools land recruits before the age of N.I.L.? For an athlete to choose a school all it took was a feeling of warmth on the campus and a comfortable presence radiating from the team. In an interview with Rob Stone, Tim Tebow talked about his decision to play football at Florida, “Where I really came to that realization is when I knew I was believing in Florida for the people that were there, and specifically for Coach Meyer, more than the University of Florida,” Tebow said to Stone. Tebow is considered one of the best college athletes of all time and he chose Florida off of how it felt like home rather than a decision based off of monetization.

N.I.L. was outlawed for many years and not for any reason, it ruins the entire concept of “recruiting” when a player chooses money over how they fit into the team and into the school. Many critics will agree that profiting off of name, image, and likeness creates an uneven balance between collegiate and professional sports. I believe that it takes no integrity and morals to gravitate towards money but when you subtract that aspect it changes things completely and evens the playing field. The subject of buzzing controversy of late has been the heavily recruited Arch Manning, who is the nephew of Payton and Eli Manning. Arch recently created turmoil in the sports community as he chose to opt out of the upcoming video game NCAA 25. If you chose to opt into the game you get 600 dollars and a copy of the game however, that was indeed not good enough for the five star Manning. Fans claim that the addition of money into college sports really reveals the soaring ego’s in today’s game of college sports.

Lou Holtz, one of the most influential and respected football coaches that led Notre Dame to an impressive 30-2 record in 11 seasons, stands by his old school background and disagrees with N.I.L.

“The NIL and the transfer portal are both terrible for college athletics,” Holtz said as the guest speaker at the Palm Beach Kennel Club.

To me personally a brand new Mercedes and an astronomical sum of money is nice and all but as an aspiring college athlete myself, nothing is more important than a friendly environment and respect from coaches and teammates. The grasp that money has on college sports spoils any aim to fairly recruit players. You should make your decision off of wherever it truly feels like home.