Since 2018 the Transfer Portal and NIL deals have had a major effect over the college sports world causing a lot of problems and some mayhem the past couple of years. NIL stands for Name, Image, and Likeness. It gives the ability to college athletes a legal right to control how their image is used. College athletes can get deals and make money from clothing brands and commercialization. NIL deals don’t always have to include money, athletes can get free sneakers, clothes, and dorm essentials, etc. Schools are allowed to give money to players to help athletes make the decision to go to their schools. In 2023 more than 31,000 College Athletes entered the transfer portal looking to find a new school to go to. This affects a lot in college sports because you can just leave whenever and go to a smaller or bigger College which affects a lot like playing time, team chemistry, and the athletes school life. I have a lot of first hand stories about the transfer portal because I have two cousins who play division one softball and another one who is in the recruiting process, and my dad coaches at SIU, So I hear and see a lot of stories about all the NIL deals and transfer portal situations.

A softball player was at practice and was not feeling good so she told the coach but the coach would not let her leave or sit down so she had to tough it out the whole practice and once it was over went to the Hospital to see what was wrong with her. She ended up having a minor injury that would limit her for the rest of the season, she overall had a bad experience there but that was her “breaking point”. She entered the transfer portal with three years of eligibility left she transferred to another school and is much happier there than she was at the other college and is preparing for her final season there after losing in the OVC championship last season. Last year two basketball players from SIU transferred, one went to the University of Illinois and the other went to Purdue. They both were juniors and they got to go to school for free for their last year plus a couple thousand dollars in NIL deals to go there. The SIU coach insisted that they leave and go get the money and go to those big schools. Marcus Domask went to Illinois and they got all the way to the Elite Eight and lost to the team that would win it all. Lance Jones went to Purdue and they went all the way to the Championship game and lost to UCONN. Both of them had the opportunity to try out for an NBA team and currently Marcus Domask is on the Chicago Bulls G-League team. These are some good ending stories that involve the transfer portal, but not all stories end well.

This year a football player entered the transfer portal thinking that he would go somewhere big. The coach told the whole team that if you entered the transfer portal we would not take you back. No school offered him anything so he tried coming back, but like coach said he would not be able to come back so he was to pay for his final year of school and be in the stands in the game rather than the sideline. That is the only personal negative transfer portal story I know but the transfer portal is not just affecting college players but high school players as well. It affects high school athletes because with more than 31,000 athletes testing their luck in the transfer portal it makes the recruiting process ten times harder on coaches to find the athletes they want and need and this might cause a really good high school athlete to fall through the cracks and not get the chance to go to college and play sports.

There are some pros and cons with the transfer portal but the NIL deals are a problem in college sports.  Shedeur Sanders makes $4.7 million in NIL deals. A wide receiver got $350,000, a car, and a house to live in to go play football at the University of Oklahoma.I think this is unfair to teams and the competition that they play because you can have a team of  high school recruits  and another team full of transfers from power five schools because they paid them millions of millions of dollars to come play football or baseball or whatever sport they are playing. I like the idea of athletes getting paid because of their name and I think that part is fair, what I don’t think is fair is schools spending money on athletes to come play for them. I think there should be a certain amount of NIL deals each athlete gets, and a limit on the amount of money they get to spend on players a year. Let’s say Athletes get a maximum of ten NIL deals for however long they are in college and teams can only spend $20,000 in NIL deals to get players to come to their schools. Now every NCAA division one school would have the exact same limitations on money and the players with their deals just so it keeps everything somewhat fair. Ohio State spent $20 million dollars on their football team and they are in the National Football Championship.

I think some changes need to be made so that college athletes can just go spend thousands of dollars if they don’t make it to the pros. I think this is a big problem in college sports and something needs to change because the numbers are only going to get higher and higher as the years past and there is no change.