Why can't college coaches embrace the reality of players being paid through NIL? | Opinion

You know we’re in a strange place with college sports when there’s more public bickering between coaches now that the money is out in the open than there was back in the day when they had to deliver it under the table.

Before name, image and likeness rights allowed college athletes to earn a real living and re-shaped the recruiting landscape, you could always call a coach you knew well and find out who was paying whom, what slimy scheme got Player X to School Y and which of their colleagues they considered to be dirty. It would never be said publicly, of course — there was always sort of an honor among thieves element to the game — but college coaches are generally like the rest of us. They love to gossip.

Within the last year, though, the tensions brought by this changing environment have spilled out into the open on a few occasions.

The most notable was Nick Saban telling a crowd at a public event in Birmingham that Texas A&M bought its No. 1-ranked recruiting class, eliciting such an over-the-top reaction from the Aggies that their athletics director wrote to the SEC office suggesting Saban should be fined and suspended. It will be hard, if not impossible, to ever outdo that level of sanctimony.

But it remains confusing, all these months later, that coaches are still trying to out-Mr. Clean each other at a time when the rest of the world A) Understands that there is a financial component to the recruiting process, and B) Doesn’t particularly care one way or the other.

The latest hysteria occurred Saturday night when Syracuse coach and perpetual whiner Jim Boeheim ran off at the mouth in an interview with ESPN, saying: “This is an awful place we’re in in college basketball. Pittsburgh bought a team. OK, fine. My (big donor) talks about it, but he doesn’t give anyone any money. Nothing. Not one guy. Our guys make like $20,000. Wake Forest bought a team. Miami bought a team. ... It’s like, ‘Really, this is where we are?’ That’s really where we are, and it’s only going to get worse.”

This is ostensibly Boeheim’s way of coping with the reality that he is 78 years old, his program has been in decline for several years and the drumbeat of a retirement he doesn't want is getting louder all the time. It’s also objectively hilarious given that Boeheim’s program has twice been hit with NCAA violations during his tenure. How disappointing to learn it wasn't just the Central New York weather that brought all those McDonald’s All-Americans to Syracuse over the decades.

But a few people didn’t find Boeheim’s comments funny: Pitt’s Jeff Capel and Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes.

Though Boeheim has subsequently apologized both personally and publicly, Forbes spent the rest of the weekend making it clear that no recruit has gone to Wake because of NIL money. On Monday’s media conference call, Capel seemingly had no interest in engaging on the topic but pointed out that one of Pitt’s key transfers came from Colgate, another didn’t start for his previous team and another missed the past two seasons with injuries. Not exactly your typical NIL All-Stars.

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"I haven’t thought about NIL that much,” Capel said.

Sure, Coach. You haven’t thought about NIL much, just like chefs don’t think much about butter or pilots don’t think much about landing gear.

And that’s what makes this entire “controversy” so confusing. Why are coaches trying to one-up each other in distancing themselves from such a key element of roster-building in college sports? And if Boeheim genuinely believes what he said during his backtrack Monday, that “all the NILs I know of are legal and within the rules completely,” then why was he so spun up about it on Saturday night?

NIL good for college sports as a whole

Look, it’s no secret there are huge problems with the NIL landscape as currently constituted. The Athletic published a very well-done piece Monday detailing how quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada ended up signing a $13.85 million deal with Florida’s booster collective, only for the group to renege when it came time to make its $500,000 up-front payment. And they did it, according to The Athletic, because of a clause in the contract that allowed the collective to terminate the agreement “without penalty or further obligation.”

Rashada, who last week signed with Arizona State and doesn’t appear to have any NIL deal lined up, is indeed representative of a major issue. Because of a lack of NIL oversight from the NCAA, and the inability of schools to be directly involved in these deals, there is space for bad-faith actors to promise things they can’t deliver or write contracts that aren’t really contracts.

The problem with NIL isn’t that a player might make a college decision based on money, or that some booster can buy a team and get good in a hurry. That’s just capitalism, and it’s been part of college sports since time immemorial. The problem is that nobody in this system is looking out for the interests of a Jaden Rashada to make sure that the people making crazy promises — and yes, $13.85 million is a ridiculous amount for a high school quarterback — are on the up-and-up.

That’s where the focus needs to be on NIL reform, not whether Boeheim misses the NCAA Tournament again because some schools in his conference used NIL to get better in a hurry.

Making this about the integrity of amateurism, which has been the default setting of college athletics for the last 50 years, is the wrong path to go down here. First of all, that has not been a winning argument lately either with the public or the Supreme Court. And second, NIL has been good for college sports as a whole.

Athletes are staying in school longer because they have the opportunity to make really good money. Programs that were on the outside looking in for top talent have had the chance to pick off a really good player here or there because their boosters have their ducks in a row on NIL deals.

And in the end, when people like Boeheim want to throw stones at other programs for buying players through NIL, the correct answer doesn’t have to be whispered in hushed tones these days: Why aren’t you doing the same?

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College coaches struggling with reality of players being paid with NIL