Opinion: NIL revenue earned by student-athletes should be placed in a trust
Texas A&M sophomore wide receiver Evan Stewart officially entered the NCAA Transfer Portal on Tuesday according to reports.
The move is likely less about fit but more so how Stewart can maximize his value in college. In the new era of Name, Image and Likeness, student-athletes are being offered boatloads of money to play for certain universities, as they should.
According to Rivals reporter Landyn Rosow, Alabama and USC are the frontrunners to land Stewart’s services. Stewart is slotted at No. 14 in the On3 NIL rankings, with an expected valuation of $1.4 million, an increase of $288,000 since entering the portal on Tuesday.
Back in 2019, California was the first state to allow collegiate athletes to profit from their NIL. Even before that, I’ve argued that the students should be compensated, given the millions and billions of dollars that Power Five universities haul in yearly.
However, a majority of student-athletes are still very young. Therefore, the best way to maximize NIL for both parties is to protect the athletes and put NIL earnings in a trust for the players.
Less than 2% of student-athletes go on to play professional sports. Sure, a future NFL Draft pick may not worry about spending a million dollars in college when tens and hundreds more are on the way. But that’s not the reality for most college athletes.
Imagine if you were a 21-year-old just given a million dollars. You probably wouldn’t make the most educated decisions on what to spend it on. Even if you think you would, stop lying to yourself.
Specifically in a hard-hitting sport like football, injuries happen constantly. In the respective cases of Eric LeGrand and Ryan Shazier, injuries ended their careers on the gridiron.
In Shazier’s situation, he at least made it to the NFL and earned over $18 million. But what if that injury occurred while he was still at The Ohio State University? Shazier would’ve been left with nothing but memories while the Buckeyes program raked in the dough.
Using Shazier as an example, he was a lock to be a first-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. If he were in college a decade later, he’d be maximizing his value like Stewart is attempting to do today. Current Buckeyes junior wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. has an NIL valuation of $1.4 million like Stewart.
The overall point is, what if Shazier spent all his NIL money banking on making millions more in the NFL, ultimately to have an injury dash those dreams in a millisecond?
Student-athletes should be protected from their youth negligence by establishing a trust that they can’t access in its entirety until departing college or turning 25 when the frontal lobe of the brain is fully developed.
Obviously, they would still have needs while in college for food, fun activities and things of that nature. If a trust were to be established, athletes could withdraw certain amounts, like a stipend for necessities.
College students don’t need to drive around in fancy cars like a Rolls-Royce, just ask the Greatest Of All Time.
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