Bruce Pearl is all for players taking advantage of new NIL opportunities, but he’s also like to see more guidelines in place. It’s a common sentiment among the leaders in college sports as the lack of regulation has led many players to transfer in search of a bigger pay day.
The Auburn coach tackled the subject on College GameDay ahead of Saturday’s Final Four contests, highlighting the tampering that occurs in the offseason. He brought up that even in the pros, contracts bind players from leaving teams before they expire.
Asked the most frustrating part of roster management in this new era, Pearl didn’t hesitate.
“The biggest obstacle is that it’s OK for anybody representing a collective at another school to call my current players right now and say, ‘just check it in. You’ve had a great year. How much is Auburn going to do? What’s your NIL there? Oh well if you think about coming here to this school, it could be this,'” Pearl said. “So it’s not exactly the free market system because in the free market system there are contracts. There are non-competes. There are certain guidelines and right now there’s not enough order to it.”
Currently, states have their own NIL laws which unsurprisingly lead to confusion as teams are effectively playing by different rules. There is also no salary cap to stop teams from spending as much as they want to bring in star players, and some schools simply have more to work with.
Names such as Nick Saban and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey have been active in going to bat for federal NIL legislation, making trips to Washington DC to speak on it. It seems we are due for some sort of law eventually, but as we prepare to enter the third year of NIL it’s still very much a work in progress at the moment.
Overall, Bruce Pearl still acknowledges that NIL is a positive thing for college sports and the athletes. However, he still hopes eventually the system can be improved upon, preventing some of the frustrating aspects he mentioned.
“I’m glad the kids are getting paid,” he said. “I really am. I want my guys to not work at a Subway, but I want them to own five of them when they get done. I think it’s a really good thing, we just need to find a way to put a little order in it. But that’s been the most thing is the tampering and guys being recruited off your own roster.”
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