In 2021, the NCAA made one of the largest rule changes in its history. They made it so athletes can get paid based on their “name, image, and likeness”, or NIL. This means that any college athlete can sign a deal with a company and get paid for it. The companies hope that consumers will see an athlete with a product and want to buy it because of the athlete.
In Cooper Flagg’s one season playing basketball at Duke, he earned about 28 million dollars in NIL money.
“He had 13 million with New Balance, and 15 million with Fanatics,” reported Howard Bryant.
Flagg is now a rookie in the NBA on the Dallas Mavericks, and with his contract, is making around 64 million dollars over the 4 years he is signed with them. He is only guaranteed 28 million of the 64 million in the first 2 years and only 13 million dollars this season due to rookie contract restrictions.
To put things into perspective, Cooper Flag will have made the same amount of money in his freshman year in college and in his first two seasons in the NBA.
Along with getting money from outside companies, college athletes are now allowed to get paid by schools to play for them.
Vanderbilt had placed last in the SEC football standings since 2019, until the 2024-2025 season, when they placed 14th out of 16.
But this season, they magically turned the program around and were one of the best teams in College Football in October. Everyone, including myself, was wondering how a program could go from consistently horrible to one of the best.
At the start of 2024, Vanderbilt knew they had to make some changes to their program if they wanted to have a better outcome in the season. So they did. New Mexico State Quarterback Diego Pavia transferred in the offseason following his head coach, Jerry Kill. It was later reported that Pavia was making around 2 million dollars playing at Vanderbilt. With Pavia’s help, Vanderbilt is currently ranked 14th in the country, but at the peak of their season, they were ranked 9th in the nation on the AP Poll.
One of the greatest perspectives on NIL money comes from former Miami Hurricanes Basketball coach Jim Larrañaga.
“What shocked me, beyond belief, was after we made it to the Final Four just 18 months ago, the first time I met with the players, eight of them decided they were going to put their name in the [transfer] portal and leave,” stated Larrañaga in his retirement speech.
As he points out, he coached the Hurricanes to the final four, which is a great achievement by itself for not only the coach but the players as well. Naturally, you would think that if your team was one of the best 4 in the entire country, you would stick around for at least another season and try to get even better and hopefully go to the National Championship. But instead, 8 of the players left the team to try and make more money elsewhere.
In 2025, both the College Football and Basketball championship games had 3 to 8 million more viewers than the World Series and NBA championship.
It is clear as day that college sports are at the peak of their existence, and they’re only going up from here. With 18 to 20-year-olds getting paid millions, and players jumping around teams searching for cash, Jim Larrañaga said it best.
“It’s become professional.”
