Trevor Lawrence admits he's glad he didn't have to navigate NIL while at Clemson

Trevor Lawrence admitted he was happy he didn’t have to deal with NIL while in college when he starred at Clemson. The Jacksonville Jaguars star is one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL at this point but was a superstar with the Tigers. NIL was in its infancy and coming around right as Lawrence shipped out to the NFL. He joined former Clemson teammate Darien Rencher on his podcast I to discuss the issue.

“I’m honestly glad it wasn’t (a thing while I was in college),” Lawrence said. “I think it is really good for certain guys and for certain situations. I think it can be bad for other guys and not saying it would be bad for me like I do think obviously I could have made some money but yeah, I ended up making that money off the field, you know, either way, I think I’ve been strategic and what I’ve chosen to do, but it would have been hard to navigate, especially as a college player.

“Like it’s hard enough to do school and be a great player and try to make it to the NFL right? And you do all that but you add in like alright, marketing, commercials, shoots, getting paid this now I gotta pay taxes on this. I gotta hire people to manage all this for me. That’s hard.” 

Lawrence named the pros and cons of NIL these days. He pointed out how some athletes can really take advantage of the opportunity if an NFL career doesn’t pan out.

“Guys were obviously doing it, but then I look at guys like you who have made a name for themselves or college who have like a great platform who’ve done things the right way,” Lawrence said. “They’ve built a name for themselves and like you had an opportunity to make a good bit of money, right? Or like obviously I don’t know all the numbers but I’m sure that’s helped you a lot financially. So you look at that and I’m thankful that guys get to do that.

“You look at other guys that maybe had a great college career and were a huge name and then they never got to make a big pan out in the NFL and they probably lost a million couple million dollars. So you look at both sides of it. I mean, I definitely don’t feel like I missed anything.”

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