That’s the ultimate player restriction though. If a career NFL scout team type talent (or even late round NFL draft pick talent) can make $200k per year until they’re 30 and keep playing college ball (while transferring around as they see fit), you then have hundreds of roster spots not available for incoming high school players. The worst of them would have to drop down to FCS, get no chance of any real NIL benefits, and water down the overall pool substantially. Hard to see that path really being preferable for enough players for it to become applicable.
Only way it could possibly work is if you completely decoupled the education / academic eligibility side and just went full pro sports with it. Really hard to see someone attending random classes for 10 years straight and continuing to pay tuition just to keep playing football. In that case, you’d also completely kill college football as a whole - officially - and really no one is going to give a crap about it anymore. Many people, myself included, are already at that point.
Have to sit out 1 year if you transfer- gone.
Cant make money off your name or image- gone.
Cant play a game and still redshirt- gone.
School can block where a player can transfer to- gone.
Have 5 to play 4- gone(in many scenarios now).
Also, Players/teams are now allowed to collectively bargain.
All these were significant player restrictions that have been eliminated in recent years. All of them were questioned with the logic of 'can a regular student or even one that is receiving scholarships from the university do these things or are they limited too?' and in each instance, a regular student can do whatever they want without penalty.
The last domino to fall will be the biggest, but there is no actual difference that would justify keeping it up. What actual legal justification is there to keep a student athlete from competing for as long as they want to compete(and as long as schools want them to compete), when you take into account the 6 recent changes I mention above?
I am not saying I want the last domino to fall, but I definitely cant see why it should continue to stand, considering all of the related changes.
