In the 2024 NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, Black men made up 50% of the 68 teams. Many were recipients of name, image and likeness deals — commonly known as NIL. These financial agreements, with companies ranging from multibillion-dollar corporations to local car dealerships and college-town restaurants, provided young Black men — and Black women, who make up 44% of Division I basketball players — with critical monetary resources to cover their basic needs.
In some cases, these resources helped stave off their family’s eviction or provided sustenance during a time when countless Americans are food insecure. Yet many college coaches and administrators, some of the usual suspects, are lobbying the federal government to place strict regulations on NIL while duplicitously accumulating generational wealth via the same free-market, capitalist system under which NIL functions.
Hypocritically adopting a slave masters’ mentality, hundreds of the said coaches and administrators have gained their riches off of the labor of the student-athletes whose earning power they are endeavoring to control. Last Thursday, expectedly, President Donald Trump, the United States’ Oppressor in Chief, issued an executive order misappropriately named “SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS.” Its intent is to change how NIL and other payments to college athletes are managed.
Some of the language includes what is meant to be an ominous warning that “the future of college is under unprecedented threat.” The irony — and on-brand nature — is not lost, given that it comes from a man whose family amassed untold wealth in the previously unregulated “Wild West” of the cryptocurrency industry; Congress did not enact its first piece of regulatory legislation until Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law just two weeks ago on July 18.
Yes, there are complications and potential pitfalls for college athletics if there aren’t changes to the current system. Beginning in 2021, college athletes have been afforded the opportunity to earn money through NIL following years of antitrust lawsuits filed against the NCAA. Subsequently, third-party payments and student-athletes being paid directly by their colleges is also permissible.
The shift has led to headline-making deals, including incoming BYU freshman basketball star AJ Dybantsa, a projected top-two pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Dybantsa has already signed multiple NIL agreements, the most recent an eight-figure deal with Fanatics Collectibles, bringing his reported total close to $20 million.
Fundamentally, looking through a clear lens and with historical context, powerful and privileged white men fear losing their firm control of economic systems and by extension control of the Black men and women. Yes, white student-athletes also benefit from the new college athletics framework but they aren’t the intended target.
Those who are fighting to fervently dismantle or dramatically modify it would make slave owner Thomas Jefferson, a so-called Founding Father and the founder of the University of Virginia, one of the country’s leading academic and athletic institutions, mightily proud.