Urban Meyer paints bleak picture for NCAA's future regarding NIL

Former college football and NFL coach Urban Meyer came out of the woodwork to offer up his perspective on important issues in the NCAA landscape. He went on the Big Ten Network Thursday night, and as part of his appearance, Meyer explained how he’s scared of what the NIL developments over the last year or so will do to college sports.

Here were some of his comments regarding NIL:

“With Name, Image and Likeness, the air is out of the balloon and you can’t put it back in there. So now they’re gonna have to somehow regulate this thing. The only way to do that is to unionize, is to have all the teams under one umbrella. Right now, they’re not. Everybody’s watching out for themselves. There’s different rules in different states. Someone asked me why they don’t just do a salary cap like the NFL? What are you talking about? That’s not even the same conversation because in the NFL they’re all under the umbrella of the NFL. In college football it’s not that way at all.”

It’s fair to say the NIL situation across the country is messy and utterly disorganized. Perhaps the former coach is right that the NCAA needs to find a way to uniformly regulate laws surrounding the deals.

Urban Meyer on USC, UCLA move to Big Ten

Meyer also addressed the biggest story of the offseason: USC and UCLA leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. He also expressed fears regarding the future state of the NCAA on this issue as well. Here’s what he had to say:

“Well I had a couple conversations today with some higher ups in actually both conferences,” Meyer said. “I think within four years you’re going to see a transformation that a lot of people really won’t recognize college football. I think you’re gonna see two empire conferences, I really do. Don’t know what those are, I have an idea.”

Certainly seems like the SEC and Big Ten would be the two conferences in this scenario.

“When Oklahoma and Texas made the move, everybody in the college football world said, ‘Oh, what’s next?’ Now you see USC and UCLA jump to the Big Ten,” Meyer continued. “Everybody is saying what about Oregon? What about Arizona? There are some really, really good football schools out there.

“What happens to them now? And what happens to the Big 12 conference? Is it going to be a Pac-12/Big Ten and then an SEC/ACC and then the Big 12 kind of just finds its way? This is going to be – I’ll tell you what, it’s all positioning right now.”