College Football: Chaos or Fairness?
NIL, the transfer portal and new eligibility rules are changing the game. Before we react, perhaps we should have a better conversation about what needed to change—and what is worth preserving.
For millions of Americans, college football is more than a sport. It is Saturday afternoons with family. It is rivalries that stretch across generations. It is marching bands, fight songs, packed stadiums, alumni traditions and communities built around a school and a team.
That is why the changes taking place in college football feel so personal.
NIL. The transfer portal. Direct revenue sharing. New eligibility rules. Players testing professional football and trying to return to college. Congress now considering national legislation to bring some order to the system.
To some fans, it feels like the sport they love is being dismantled one tradition at a time. To many athletes and their supporters, it feels like long-overdue change in a system that generated billions of dollars while severely limiting the rights and economic opportunities of the young people who actually played the games.
Both reactions are real. Both deserve to be heard.
The numbers help explain why people can look at the same changes and reach very different conclusions.
NIL has grown from an estimated $918 million market in 2021–22 to roughly $2.75 billion in 2025–26, with Opendorse now estimating about $4.5 billion for 2026–27.
The money is also highly concentrated: roughly two-thirds of Power Four football players earn less than $10,000 annually, while a relatively small group earns six figures or more.
One interpretation is that this is progress—the players who create the most economic value finally have the freedom to share in it, while legitimate commercial advertisers are increasingly participating in the market.
Another interpretation is that this is chaos—a system intended to give athletes reasonable economic rights has evolved into a highly concentrated marketplace where a small number of stars can earn extraordinary amounts and booster-supported money can influence recruiting and transfers.
Recent estimates suggest that among direct third-party athlete payments: roughly 41% comes through booster or collective funding and 59% through commercial sources, while only a short time ago collectives were estimated to drive the overwhelming majority of the NIL marketplace.
And the money isn't just growing—it is accelerating. The estimated NIL market is jumping from about $2.75 billion in 2025–26 to $4.5 billion in 2026–27, an increase of nearly 64% in one year. Why? Indiana's remarkable transformation may be part of the answer. In just two seasons, Curt Cignetti used the transfer portal, a strong culture and increased NIL support—including significant backing from Mark Cuban—to turn one of college football's historically weakest programs into an undefeated national champion. And Indiana didn't even have the biggest NIL budget. What message does that send to every ambitious coach, athletic director and wealthy booster in America? If Indiana can do it, why can't we? Add direct revenue sharing, the ability to spend above the new cap, a transfer portal filled with proven players, more teams believing they can reach a 12-team playoff and corporations discovering that college athletes are valuable advertising channels, and the result is predictable: more money chasing more players, faster than anyone expected. Is that the market finally working—or the beginning of an arms race that college football may eventually have to control?
Are these numbers evidence that college football has finally become fairer—or evidence that we have replaced an unfair old system with an unstable new one? That is the conversation worth having.
The People Who Fear We Are Losing College Football
There is a reason fans are frustrated.
Part of what made college football different from professional sports was the connection between a player and a school. You watched an 18-year-old freshman arrive on campus, struggle, improve, become a starter and perhaps eventually become a team captain. You knew the players. They knew the rivalry. They understood what it meant to wear that school's uniform.
Today, a player can leave after one season—or sometimes after one semester. A team's roster can change dramatically from year to year. Coaches are no longer simply recruiting high school athletes. They are recruiting players from other colleges while trying to prevent their own players from being recruited away.
Add NIL money to that system and, for many fans, college football begins to feel less like college athletics and more like professional free agency.
Their concern is not necessarily that athletes are earning money. It is that something valuable may be disappearing in the process: tradition, loyalty, continuity, development and the idea that being part of a college team means something beyond the next financial opportunity.
Those concerns should not simply be dismissed as nostalgia. They are part of what made college football special.
The Athletes Who Believe the Old System Was Never Fair
But there is another perspective that deserves just as much passion.
For decades, coaches could leave for better jobs and bigger contracts. Universities could fire coaches. Conferences could renegotiate billion-dollar television agreements. Networks, apparel companies and athletic departments could generate enormous revenue from college sports.
The athlete had far fewer choices.
A college football player could become one of the most recognizable people in an entire state, help fill an 80,000-seat stadium and sell jerseys, television subscriptions and advertising—and still face restrictions on his ability to profit from his own name, image and likeness.
That was becoming increasingly difficult to defend.
Why should a music student be allowed to earn money performing but a football player be prohibited from appearing in a commercial? Why should a student with a large social-media following be able to earn money promoting a product while an athlete cannot? And why should a coach be able to leave one school for another while a player faces restrictions for making the same decision?
From that perspective, NIL and the transfer portal are not destroying college football. They are correcting an imbalance that existed for generations.
That perspective should not be dismissed either.
Did NIL Create Balance—or Simply Bring the Old Booster System Above the Table?
This is where the NIL conversation becomes more uncomfortable.
For decades, college football lived with persistent stories and scandals involving boosters quietly providing star players with cash, cars, jobs, housing or other benefits. The NCAA tried to police that world, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
One criticism of today's NIL system is that we may have effectively legitimized and greatly expanded something that previously happened under the table.
The difference is that now the amounts can be openly discussed, organized and tied to sophisticated NIL collectives and commercial arrangements. We hear about college athletes earning hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of dollars. We see stories and social-media posts featuring expensive cars, luxury apartments and lifestyles that look increasingly like those of professional athletes.
That raises a fair question: Is this what we intended when we said college athletes deserved the right to earn money from their name, image and likeness?
Perhaps the original goal was greater balance. Athletes should share in the economic value they help create. They should be able to appear in advertisements, sign autographs, promote products and benefit financially from their popularity.
But did we intend to create a system in which wealthy programs and boosters could compete to assemble multimillion-dollar college rosters? Did we intend for an 18- or 19-year-old college athlete to receive millions of dollars simply because one school has deeper booster resources than another?
And if one star player is driving a Rolls-Royce while most of his teammates receive dramatically less, have we created fairness—or simply introduced a new kind of imbalance inside the locker room?
Those questions are not an argument for returning to the old system. They are an argument for asking whether we have moved from too little economic freedom to too few meaningful boundaries.
If a booster-supported organization promises an athlete a large financial opportunity if he attends a particular university, is that really NIL? Or is it recruiting? If another school offers that player substantially more money after one season, is that a legitimate commercial opportunity—or essentially a transfer payment?
This is where people begin arguing about the word fairness while meaning very different things.
One person says fairness means allowing the athlete to maximize his value.
Another says fairness means preventing wealthy programs from simply purchasing the best rosters.
Another may say fairness means athletes deserve a meaningful share of the enormous revenue their sport generates—but that college athletics still needs limits that distinguish it from professional sports.
All three may genuinely believe they are defending fairness. They are simply defining it differently.
The Transfer Portal Creates the Same Conflict
The portal represents freedom to one person and instability to another.
Athletes understandably ask why they should remain committed to a school if the coach who recruited them leaves. They may discover that they are not going to play, that the system does not fit their skills or that another school offers a better academic, athletic or financial opportunity.
Why shouldn't they be able to leave?
But coaches and fans see the other side. What happens when every player becomes a potential free agent every year? What happens to player development? What happens to teammates who believed they were building something together? What happens to the very idea of a team?
Again, two legitimate values collide: freedom and stability.
The real conversation should not be about choosing one and rejecting the other. It should be about finding the right balance.
And Now We Have to Decide When College Football Ends and Professional Football Begins
Recent eligibility disputes have pushed the issue even further.
If a player leaves college early, signs with an NFL organization, spends several weeks in training camp but never plays in an NFL game, should he be allowed to return to college if he still has eligibility available?
There is a reasonable argument that he should. Perhaps he made the decision under an old set of eligibility rules. Perhaps his professional opportunity disappeared almost immediately. Why should a short attempt at professional football permanently eliminate his opportunity to finish his college career?
But there is also a powerful argument on the other side.
At some point, college sports need a boundary. If professional football players can return to college, what happens next? Do NFL training-camp cuts become recruiting prospects? What about practice-squad players? Players from other professional leagues?
And what happens when a 24-year-old who has spent several years training professionally competes against an 18-year-old freshman?
Again, the issue is not as simple as right versus wrong. It is about deciding where the line should be drawn and why.
Now Congress Wants to Draw Some of Those Lines
Congress is considering legislation designed to create a more consistent national framework for college sports.
That is understandable.
College football is a national competition being governed by an increasingly complicated combination of NCAA rules, conference rules, court decisions and different state laws.
Imagine trying to operate a professional sports league where Texas, Florida, Michigan, California and Ohio all had different rules governing player compensation and recruiting.
Eventually, something has to give.
Supporters of federal legislation argue that college sports need one rulebook. They want clearer rules around NIL, transfers, eligibility, recruiting, revenue sharing and athlete protections.
There is considerable logic behind that position.
But critics raise an equally important warning: Be careful what authority you give back to the institutions that controlled the old system.
Many of the rights athletes have today came because athletes challenged NCAA rules in court. If Congress protects the NCAA and conferences from certain future legal challenges, will we create stability—or simply make it harder for athletes to challenge unfair rules in the future?
That is not a minor question. It may be one of the most important questions in the entire debate.
This Is Where Our Conversations Usually Go Wrong
College football provides a perfect example of what happens in public debate today.
Someone says NIL is destroying college football, and someone immediately responds, “You just don't want the players to get paid.”
Someone says the transfer portal is out of control, and the response becomes, “Coaches can leave. Why shouldn't players?”
Someone argues that the NCAA needs more authority, and another responds, “The NCAA exploited athletes for decades.”
Soon, everyone is defending a position instead of exploring the problem.
We move very quickly from hearing something to reacting to it. The person becomes the opponent. The argument becomes the battle. And the possibility of actually understanding each other disappears.
But what if we changed the goal?
What if we moved from reaction to interaction?
Reaction Says: Defend Your Side. Interaction Says: Understand the Issue.
Reaction asks, “How do I prove you wrong?”
Interaction asks, “What are you trying to protect?”
Reaction hears someone criticize NIL and assumes that person opposes athlete compensation. Interaction asks whether that person might actually support athlete compensation but worry that a legitimate economic right has evolved into an unregulated recruiting marketplace.
Reaction hears someone defend the transfer portal and assumes that person does not care about team loyalty. Interaction asks whether that person believes athletes deserve the same freedom coaches have enjoyed for decades.
Reaction pushes people into camps. Interaction helps us discover where the real disagreement exists.
Someone can believe athletes deserve to be compensated and still wonder whether college players earning millions of dollars from booster-supported arrangements was what NIL was intended to create. Someone can believe players deserve transfer freedom and still believe unlimited transfers can hurt the sport.
Someone can value tradition without defending an unfair old system. Someone can defend athlete rights without wanting college football to become indistinguishable from the NFL.
Those are not contradictions. They are evidence that the real conversation is more complicated than the argument we usually have.
Maybe We Should Start With One Question
Instead of asking whether NIL is ruining college football, perhaps we should ask:
How do we preserve what makes college football special while protecting the rights of the athletes who make it possible?
That question leads to better ones. What economic rights should every athlete have? Where should legitimate NIL end and recruiting inducements begin? Should there be limits or guardrails on school- and booster-connected compensation? How much transfer freedom is reasonable? When should professional participation end college eligibility? What authority should the NCAA and conferences have? Who should be able to challenge those rules?
And perhaps most importantly: What are we actually trying to preserve?
If we cannot answer that question together, it will be very difficult to build a system that works.
This Is Where Clarion Can Help Move Us From Reaction to Interaction
Clarion, CivilTalk's Conversational Intelligence AI agent, is designed for exactly this kind of conversation.
Not to tell us who is right. Not to declare a winner. And not to replace human judgment.
Clarion serves as a neutral observer—a second set of eyes in the conversation—helping us better understand what actually happened.
Imagine bringing together players, coaches, administrators, fans, NIL representatives and policymakers for a discussion about the future of college football.
At first, the room may sound divided. But after Clarion analyzes the conversation, a different picture may emerge.
Perhaps nearly everyone agrees that athletes deserve to earn money. Perhaps nearly everyone agrees that players need reasonable transfer opportunities. Perhaps nearly everyone agrees that disguised recruiting payments should be controlled. Perhaps nearly everyone agrees that one national framework would be better than fifty different systems.
Suddenly the disagreement becomes clearer.
Maybe the group really disagrees about how much compensation is reasonable, whether booster-funded NIL needs stronger boundaries, how many transfers should be allowed, what counts as legitimate NIL, when professional participation should permanently end college eligibility, or how much authority the NCAA should have.
That is valuable because Clarion can help us stop reacting to the person and start interacting with the actual issue.
It helps make visible where we agree, where we disagree, what positions people actually hold, what remains unresolved and what might move the conversation forward.
That is Conversational Intelligence.
College Football Needs Rules. It Also Needs a Better Conversation.
College football is going to change. Some of those changes were necessary. Some may have gone too far. Others are still unfolding.
Congress may be part of the solution. The NCAA may be part of the solution. Conferences, universities, coaches and athletes all have legitimate interests that need to be represented.
But before we decide what the future of college football should look like, we should resist the temptation to reduce the debate to winners and losers.
The fan worried about losing tradition deserves to be heard. The athlete demanding economic freedom deserves to be heard. The coach trying to build a team deserves to be heard. The university trying to operate within a sustainable system deserves to be heard.
And the people writing the rules should have to listen to all of them.
That doesn't mean everyone will agree. It means we might finally understand what we are actually disagreeing about.
And that is where better outcomes begin.
Move from reaction to interaction.
Better Conversations. Stronger Relationships. Better Outcomes.
Let's Clarion this one.