The moment you turn a “sport” into the billionaires’ personal “bidding wars” – all meaning is lost. Everyone is a “free agent” in CFB nowadays. But is this a good thing? With the NIL landscape pretty much taking over traditional recruiting, a lot has changed. But is it for the better? What do you call it when an FCS-level program misses out on good players because every single FBS top dog throws in millions on the table to grab that coveted high school recruit? “Well, I’m not sure if the system is great for development of players, but you certainly cannot blame the players for choosing the school for both reasons,” was something Nick Saban had pointed out long back and it still makes sense. Don’t blame the players, blame the game. 

“Now, I called the NIL legalized cheating. If you have more money, you can buy players right now. That’s what it comes down to,” Former Texas DC Vance Bedford mentioned. When the Bucks ended their 2024 run with a natty win – 2 possible outcomes were bound to happen. 1: The Michigan loss was swept under the rug. 2: Poaching. Going out there and throwing a million-dollar offer to get that “amazing” player from your opponent isn’t something new and Jeremiah Smith, getting $4.5+ million to transfer out of Ohio State, wasn’t exactly a shocker.

With how easy it has become to sniff out players and sign them on using lucrative deals, some fans knew that other big-shot teams would definitely jump on the bandwagon. Now, is Smith going to take up the offer? There is no solid answer to that. Ryan Day can try and maybe throw in a better offer or his WR, but if that $4.5 million turns into $8 or $10, does it make sense for Smith to stick around?

Even take the Michael Vick hiring at Norfolk. Called to be the next “Deion Sanders” of CFB, do you really think it would work? When Michigan is out here throwing $1o million for a high school player, do you think a simple FCS subdivision team has a shot at landing a 90+ overall recruit?

Then again, who can you even blame? It isn’t Michigan’s fault that their vault is big and they are the bigger program here. Neither is it Smith’s fault that in such a short time, he has managed to show NFL-grade talent in the gridiron. How do you resolve the NIL dilemma?

The solution: Title IX

Joe Biden’s administration dropped a shocker with his Title IX rules regarding the NIL scene. The guidance pushes forward an equal split of the NIL money between all the sports. Now, in America, top schools reserve around 85% of their budget for the football program.

Now that is going straight down the drain. The entire NIL funding will go back to being your normal “Athletic Funds”. This means that no school can give a high school player a million-dollar deal to attract them. Will this new step go as planned?

Well, not exactly. The entire NIL iceberg goes much deeper. To actually implement a solution like Title IX, is going to take time, and it is going to face a he-k ton of resistance. But if it does work out, the future of College Football could change.