Lane Kiffin explains how he knew many of the NIL pitfalls that would emerge

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin knew many of the problems that would immediately emerge with NIL. He’s not alone as many college football fans and media members could have easily predicted the vast array of problems that have come about within the first year of Name, Image, and Likeness being legal in college athletics. This week on The Paul Finebaum Show, the Ole Miss head coach spent some time talking about how it was easy to predict a number of the problems that have arisen.

“I’m sure there was a lot of us that said day one, you’ve got a disaster on your hands,” Kiffin said. “How are you going to create NIL but keep donors not getting involved in it and trying to pay players to come there? Which has been what people have done illegally for years. The NCAA’s been on [that] for years. Now all of a sudden you can do that legally and you don’t think that’s gonna happen?!” he sarcastically asked.

“So how this was created and you didn’t see this coming or they didn’t see this coming, I don’t know how. And now you have the [transfer] portal on top of it so, again, you opt into free agency with no salary cap. So you’re in professional sports. You’re a great receiver. You can go into free agency and the programs don’t have salary caps. They can all pay different amounts of money. So, good luck,” Kiffin joked.

Another big problem Kiffin noted is that with players jumping into the transfer portal in search of the highest amount of NIL money, graduation rates will take a massive hit.

“And really good luck with graduation rates with student-athletes,” said Kiffin. Finebaum asked Kiffin to expand on that a little bit and he did. “Well, because everyone’s just gonna transfer. Because when you transfer, [you] go to a different school,” the Ole Miss head man said.

The NCAA deserves every bit of criticism that has come its way in the wake of NIL becoming legal. They had several years to prepare for the chaos that has been the past year and quite frankly, they did absolutely nothing but bury their heads in the sand. The old system of scholarships and paying for room and board may have violated federal antitrust laws, but the NCAA likely clung onto that archaic model for so very long, because it was easier than dealing with the complexities of the free market in college athletics.

The most difficult question for Kiffin and college football coaches across the country to answer is–who exactly is going to set these rules or limits on NIL and how? Will Congress? If Congress doesn’t step in and act, will the conferences be forced to act on their own? Any sort of cap or limit on NIL is likely to draw instant anti-trust litigation from some of the top attorneys in the country.

Michael Capino recently said in an article written by On3’s Pete Nakos: “It is against anti-trust law for the NCAA or anyone else that wants to try and use that very poor excuse for exploiting athletes. If any conference wants to give this a try, just like the NCAA, they will suffer defeat after defeat in court.”

However, there are attorneys, such as Darren Heitner, who think that regulation could be a viable option for NIL. “There is nothing that precludes a conference from self-regulation,” he told On3. “In fact, it likely makes more sense from an antitrust and normative perspective to leave any reasonable regulatory scheme to the conferences as opposed to it coming from the NCAA.”

While everyone knows the problems that need to be addressed with NIL, exactly how to fix and address those problems appears to be remarkably complicated.

On3’s Pete Nakos also contributed to this article.