Charles Barkley explains how NIL will impact college game, NBA

Former Auburn and NBA star Charles Barkley, like many other coaches and administrators across the country, is worried about the current state of the NIL space.

The NCAA finally allowed student athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness heading into the 2021 academic year, leading to student-athletes signing millions of dollars worth of endorsement deals in a few-month span. But Barkley is concerned about how these endorsement deals might shape the future of college basketball.

“Now, we’ve got this NIL thing,” Barkley said. “The toothpaste is out the tube, and I don’t know what the hell is going to happen.”

In a recent interview, Barkley was discussing Patrick Ewing and his tenure with the Georgetown Hoyas, his alma mater, which has hardly gone as planned. Georgetown is currently 6-19 overall this season, and as the Hoyas struggle, Barkley feels that the NIL landscape isn’t making things any easier for them. He said he’s rooting for his friend, Ewing, to succeed; however, the new NIL regulations are making his job much more difficult.

“I think we’re really going to turn into the haves and have-nots,” Barkley said. “I think it’s going to be really bad for the game in the long run, but the point I was making — I look at a school like Georgetown. They are great academically, but I don’t think they are going to pony up a lot of money to pay these brats coming out of high school to go to Georgetown.”

Barkley then explained that the NIL era of college athletics will favor the big schools, particularly SEC schools, that have bigger markets. These universities will command larger endorsement deals for its student-athletes, encouraging them to commit.

“I think it’s going to be very limited to SEC schools, they’re going to do what they always do. Because they are going to make sure they have a good football (and basketball) team,” Barkley said. “That’s my biggest gripe moving forward with NIL. Everybody acts like everybody is going to be raking in money. There’s a couple people — a few really — who are going to make some money, but most of the players aren’t going to make a lot of money. What’s going to happen is — I read an article yesterday about how Tennessee is ponying up $25 million. Schools like Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and a lot of other big time schools like North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, they’re going to be able to pony up money. But a lot of schools are not going to be able to pony up that type of money, and we’re really going to screw up college sports in my opinion.”

Evidently, NIL is concerning the NCAA, too. Though the governing body had previously kept itself removed from any NIL activity, the NCAA announced on Friday that the DI Council would conduct a review on the impact of NIL on student-athletes. The NCAA said in its press release that it is “concerned that some activity in the name, image and likeness space may not only be violating NCAA recruiting rules, particularly those prohibiting booster involvement, but also may be impacting the student-athlete experience negatively in some ways.” Like Barkley, the governing body is starting to grow concerned about the state of athletics.