Numbers like that will encourage more and more elite college football players to follow the NFL’s long-standing advice (perhaps as a favor to its free farm system) to play for the University of Miami in 2025, if it is accurate that former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck will receive $4 million in NIL money to do so. Continue attending classes. despite the fact that it is obviously not school. For years, like if it had been. It’s business. And, aside from those who drove it, it had been business for everyone. Except for the players, everyone involved in the manner a college football game was presented, from the president of the institution to the person selling stale popcorn, got compensated not long ago.
The curtain is now down. The front has been destroyed. Professional football is college football. Additionally, college football pays far more than most rookie contracts do in their first few years. Only the top 16 players selected in the 2024 first round were given four-year contracts worth more than $4 million annually. Therefore, a player whose draft stock may not be (or ever will be) that high can earn a lot of money by staying in college football for another year or two and still gaining playing time before entering the NFL.
The player’s final analysis looks like this. Should I go to the NFL and begin the three-year clock toward a market-level second deal, or should I accept the money that is currently available? This presupposes that the player will be good enough to land a second deal at market value and that the team that selected him would be prepared to pay it after three years rather than squat on him through the fifth-year option and then potentially engage in franchise-tag tactics.
On draft day, a different angle will ultimately come to light. Top-tier football players will be more able to decline a deal as more and more of them leave their professional college careers to play professionally and have more money in the bank with a dysfunctional team and sit out for a full season, if need be. Which gives them real leverage to tell a team to not draft them and, if they do, to promptly trade them.
Yes, that tactic still runs the danger of infuriating supporters and some members of the media, who vehemently object to athletes making business decisions. The teeth-gnashing that occurred when draft-eligible players ceased participating in bowl games will eventually end that resistance. Someone must do it first. The last time Eli Manning avoided the Chargers was in 2004. John Elway had previously refused to attend the Colts in 1983.
The NFL’s equivalent of Halley’s Comet is scheduled to reappear in 2025, 21 years after the last occurrence, based on that small sample size. It must take place. A poor owner, poor front office, and/or poor management have derailed, if not completely destroyed, far too many careers, particularly that of quarterbacks and bad rosters.
Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Geno Smith—some of the top quarterbacks of 2025—had such experience in their early career. And the Jets and Browns, who are in charge of it, may try to select a quarterback in this year’s first round. By providing college players with more experience prior to entering the NFL (playing time has obviously aided in the rapid development of Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels and Broncos quarterback Bo Nix) and a larger war chest that will enable them to resist the NFL’s Draft Industrial Complex, the NIL explosion helps to prevent a player’s NFL career from ending too soon. It isn’t intimate. It’s business. For decades, NFL teams have been allowed to make business judgments. The moment for players to make business decisions has arrived.
