NCAA Athletes Finally Being Paid

Recently, the NCAA is finally allowing college athletes to collect money off their name and likeness. This is one of the most significant rule changes since the beginning of the NCAA 115 years ago. Although the ruling has just been passed, this change has been in the talks for many years. Prior to the ruling, athletes have been banned from being paid to promote goods, and doing so would result in a termination of their scholarship and them getting banned from ever playing collegiate level sports. Although the NCAA had indicated that they had no intention of changing the ruling to allow athletes to get paid, pressure from powerful states such as California in 2019 changed the NCAA’s plans. Compared to making nothing before, some college superstars could be making millions now overnight. In my opinion, I think this is great that the NCAA is finally changing their rules as it brings in more exciting players into college sports. Recently, due to the inability to make money in college, many popular basketball stars such as Lamelo Ball opted to play overseas rather than attend college. Additionally, the NBA sought an opportunity to bring more popularity to their development league and offered promising high school players to join their league rather than go to college which proved to be enticing enough to make many top recruits accept the NBA’s offer. Most recently, with Bryce Young receiving endorsement offers of seven figures, it will be interesting to see how these young athletes are able to progress with all the newly added distractions that endorsements and money can bring. Recently, we have seen more and more athletes beginning to buy their own sports cards. It will be interesting to see if college players decide to join this trend due to the inflow of money that they used to never be able to receive before.