There's no NIL bogeyman threatening the 'sanctity' of college sports | Toppmeyer

Show yourself, bogeyman! Come out of that closet. Otherwise, I might start to think you’re a myth.

For a few years, I’ve listened to college coaches, administrators, fans and even politicians fret that freewheeling NIL deal-making and athletes transferring without penalty would wreck college sports, as we came to love them.

The onset of NIL harpooned the NCAA’s tattered amateur model, and the relaxation of NCAA transfer rules gave athletes the unfettered opportunity to change schools. As athletes enjoyed their new freedoms, college sports leaders warned of pitfalls.

A convoy of SEC coaches and athletics personnel descended on Washington, D.C., last week to lobby lawmakers to pass federal legislation to regulate the NIL market. Alabama football coach Nick Saban keeps working his stump to call for NIL measures that promote parity – even though parity has long been in short supply in college football.

A former coach, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), teamed with Saban’s pal, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), to draft an NIL bill that would place restrictions on athletes but does include some logical measures, like disclosure requirements and mandating that athletes use a uniform, NCAA-supplied contract for NIL deals.

Tuberville says federal NIL legislation is needed to preserve “the sanctity of college sports.”

Amid these alarm bells, let’s check in on how college sports fared this year, in the second athletic season featuring NIL:

– TCU played in the CFP national championship, becoming the least blue-blooded program to reach the either the BCS or CFP championship since 1999 Virginia Tech, a BCS runner-up.

– Alabama did not qualify for the CFP, for just the second time in nine years.

– Tulane football beat USC in the Cotton Bowl.

– The men’s Final Four featured: No. 4 UConn, No. 5 Miami, No. 5 San Diego State and No. 9 FAU.

– The women’s NCAA Tournament was the most entertaining I can ever recall. The national championship between LSU-Iowa became the most-watched women’s basketball game of all-time. NIL deals helped fuel the visibility and popularity of stars Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark.

– The College World Series field includes Oral Roberts, and Wake Forest is the favorite to win the CWS. The Demon Deacons are a Power Five school but hardly a perennial power.

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Upon review, it seems college sports are thriving and remain steeped in compelling drama.

Maybe, this supposed bogeyman is a myth fomented by coaches and college leaders eager to regain the power that NIL and transfer rules changes chipped away at.

Disparity in college football, in particular, didn’t begin with NIL. No college football national champion has hailed from outside a Power Five conference since 2001 Miami won from the Big East. The “U” was hardly a plucky underdog.

Five SEC teams – Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida and LSU – combined to win 13 of the past 17 national championships.

That’s some kind of parity.

Ohio State’s athletic department, during the 2022 fiscal year, generated $251.6 million in revenue. Rutgers, generated $85.6 million – a $166 million gap between two schools that compete in the same Big Ten division. These revenue figures don’t reflect NIL collectives. Financial disparity is old hat for college sports.

But, hey, at least Rutgers’ NIL collective now can pool some money for a deal for a Buckeyes transfer.

The financial disparity will grow, thanks to the SEC and Big Ten striking whopper media rights deals that dwarf the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12

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While SEC officials lobby for NIL guardrails in the name of a level playing field, the Pac-12 struggles to land a media rights deal that won’t be quarters to the SEC's dollar.

All this searching for the NIL bogeyman takes the spotlight away from twin turbulations rocking college sports – one, the aforementioned media rights disparity that may turn the Power Five into a Super Two. And, two, wonky realignments that disrupt the rivalries and familiar conferences fans grew up on.

Returning to the topic of Rutgers, what’s it doing in the Big Ten, anyway?

Come 2024, the Big Ten will span from Piscataway, New Jersey, to Los Angeles. Southern Cal will play Maryland but won’t play Stanford. UCLA will play Northwestern but won’t play Cal. This may prove profitable for USC and UCLA, but it’s no good for those left in the Pac-12, a conference held together with duct tape.

ACC powerbrokers like Clemson and Florida State rocked their conference’s boat enough that the ACC agreed to unequal revenue sharing to try to calm its seas.

The Big 12, in an attempt to retain relevance after losing Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC, is charting games in Mexico.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormack calls Mexico “a natural extension to the Big 12 footprint” – a conference footprint that spans from BYU to West Virginia to Central Florida and now, apparently, Mexico.

But, sure, tell me all about this NIL bogeyman threatening the sanctity college sports.

Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: There's no NIL bogeyman threatening the 'sanctity' of college sports