re: Coaches mull rules tweaks on signing day, bowls

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"There's no question that NIL, the transfer portal -- anybody who's surprised by this was being very naive, because conceptually this was going to end up a pay-for-play," Berry said. "You've turned this into a professional model, and I'd still like to keep it an academic model. Maybe those worlds are going to collide. The moment all this stuff happened it was bound to collide. You can't have both. I'd like to protect the academic model."

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It's not a professional sports model though. That's sort of the problem. A professional model would include things like formal contracts binding both parties, tampering rules, and a CBA between the athletes and the NCAA that includes competitive balance measures like a salary cap, results based scheduling, the ability to trade players, and holding a draft in lieu of recruiting.

College athletes are going to be deemed school employees in the not very distant future. Then there won't be eligibility requirements, they won't have to go to class anymore, and you'll end up with a bunch of dudes in their late 20s playing "college" football and basketball because they can get more money in NIL deals than they can on an NFL practice squad or second tier European league.