IS IT HEALTHY WHEN 18-YEAR-OLD ATHLETES RULE THE WORLD?

The NIL system is designed to give players a fair slice of a multi-billion-dollar pie, but should it allow an $8 million deal for a high-school QB and lucrative free agency via a wild transfer portal?

     Never again will I take a marching band for granted. It’s about the only remaining reminder that college sports actually is collegiate. The Supreme Court had virtuous intentions when it ruled athletic departments no longer could operate a slave trade, unable to bank megamillions without also allowing athletes to be compensated via names, images and likenesses.

     “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, evidently surviving his confirmation hearings well enough to make a sound judgment last summer. “The NCAA is not above the law.’’

    Problem is, because the high court effectively emasculated the NCAA with its decision, this new era of athlete entitlement was left without a how-to manual. What we have, minus a defined leadership structure, is pay-for-play mayhem in the industry. Kids not old enough to drink now have the power to cut $8 million deals — five-star prep quarterback Nico Iamaleava, who won’t graduate from high school until next year, reportedly will be paid that amount at Tennessee before his junior season ends. There are QBs on NFL rosters who won’t make that much in three years. Nico the Volunteer, he of the orange pajama pants to be sold as licensed apparel, hails from Long Beach, which means Tennessee might have outbid USC for Iamaleava to I-am-a-leave-a California.

     Or, once they’ve been on campus a few months and established their talents, kids can seek bigger payouts at richer programs via the trusty transfer portal — an institutional euphemism for legalized extortion. The portal has created a frenzied landscape of unrestrained free agency without any protection for a program. The mightiest factories will benefit, as seen in the case of Jordan Addison, who won the Biletnikoff Award as college football’s best receiver last season. He entered the portal Tuesday, enabling him to leave Pittsburgh for the highest bidder if he chooses.

     Most likely, that bidder will be USC, which offers sunshine, Hollywood, better NIL deals and a star quarterback, none of which is available at Pitt, where Kenny Pickett just left to throw spirals for the Steelers.

     THIS is college sports in 2022? No, it’s a professional paradigm that borrows stadiums, campuses, cheerleaders and TV networks — and, above all, be-true-to-your-school alumni and boosters who support the NIL system with lucrative “donations.” Athletes are more or less university employees now, with classwork available if they want it, but why would they care about English Lit when they’re already making seven figures? Elite players deserve money from the college sports machine — but this kind of money?

     In the process, the largest programs and wealthiest boosters quickly are separating themselves from the have-not pack via “collectives.” It’s a new-age, perfectly legal term for what once was considered under-the-table cheating. If you want to be a big boy in college football, you’d better pay Iamaleava and other top players what they want via the NIL windfall. Lacking federal legislation, which isn’t coming anytime soon with the NCAA in shambles and seeking a president to succeed feeble Mark Emmert, the sport is headed to a superdivision of three or four dozen programs defined primarily by which can create the most lucrative NIL opportunities. Why do you think the College Football Playoff is stalling on expansion? Why are TV negotiations on hold? Everyone is waiting for the great transformation. And it’s no surprise the most prominent coaches are bracing for change, though they’re the ones benefiting.

     “I don’t think what we’re doing right now is a sustainable model,” said Nick Saban, who acknowledged in an Associated Press interview that he’s now running an NFL-type shop at Alabama. “The concept of name, image and likeness was for players to be able to use their name, image and likeness to create opportunities for themselves. That’s what it was. So last year on our team, our guys probably made as much or more than anybody in the country. But that creates a situation where you can basically buy players. You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know.”

    “I think there's going to be a complete blowup ... especially in football, and there needs to be,” Clemson’s Dabo Swinney said. “I think eventually there will be some type of break and another division. Right now, you’ve got everybody in one group, and it's just not feasible. Alabama has different problems than Middle Tennessee, but we're trying to make them all the same and it's just not. I think you'll have 40 or 50 teams and a commissioner and here are the rules.”

    Empowering 18-year-olds is healthy for their families and portfolios, but are they prepared for the responsibilities of early millionaire-dom? In my 20s, I kept jumping to better sportswriting jobs — five in seven years — and looking back, I’m not sure it was good for my equilibrium. Along with being paid extraordinarily well up front, players can drop everything and enter the portal for a one-time transfer. Why wouldn’t Addison bolt to USC? Armed with a network of wealthy boosters in southern California, where talent agencies are poised to make NIL killings, the Trojans spent $110 million to poach coach Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma and are executing the same strategy in the portal. Addison is being wooed, no doubt, by new USC quarterback Caleb Williams, an acquaintance from their high-school days in metro Washington, D.C. If the name is familiar, Williams was a revelation last season as a true freshman at Oklahoma. The minute Riley fled Norman for Los Angeles, his QB creation was right behind him with two other Sooners, among 15 new players acquired by USC via the portal exodus. Assuming Addison is next, don’t be shocked if Riley contends for a national championship in his first season or two.

     Already a pariah in Oklahoma, Riley is a public enemy in Pittsburgh, where coach Pat Narduzzi reportedly called him several times last Friday and accused him of tampering. Or, legal cheating. There’s nothing Narduzzi can do about it. If a star player establishes credentials, the portal allows him to leave an above-average program for a powerhouse, especially one in a massive market. The new fact of college life: Players will go where they make the most money, have the most exposure and contend for national titles. That isn’t happening at Pittsburgh. It’s probably not happening at Oklahoma, where the road to the CFP will be arduous in the SEC. It’s no secret why Riley escaped to USC, which has the most built-in advantages of any program — Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Ohio State included.

     “Once a player gets in a portal and they are open to any school in the country, we’d be crazy not to look at it and now help our football team,’’ said Riley, defending his methods as a byproduct of a no-rules system.

    Just the same, he said, “I think anyone who cares about college football is not real pleased with that because that wasn’t the intention. A lot of people voiced concerns when NIL came up that there had to be a plan for that, and instead we instituted NIL without any plan for that, so that's why we're at where we're at. I'm sure at some point there's going to be a market correction, if you will, with recruiting. Hopefully there will be, because in a perfect world they stay separate.”

     There is no perfect world. The courts have ruled. Rich people who love certain college teams are showering young athletes with fortunes. Even Riley was burned by it, if he wanted Iamaleava, who could have stepped in for Williams after the 2023 season. “Again, fully supportive of guys being able to make money off their name, image and likeness. Fully supportive of that, no matter where they're at, but it should not be a part of recruiting,’’ Riley said of the $8 Million Quarterback. “They ought to know what opportunities are there that the current players are getting, sure, absolutely — yeah, you want to know that. But these promises that are made when guys are in high school, man, it's just not good for the game.” He says this while knowing he can’t — and won’t — stop USC’s “NIL donors” from giving $8 million to the next hotshot. Why put a name on a campus building when you can put it on the throwing arm of a Heisman Trophy candidate?

     College basketball has even bigger issues. As it is, elite players soon will be allowed to jump directly from high school to the NBA. Now, rosters are wrecked by the portal. Last week, star Miami guard Isaiah Wong staged a strike of sorts, saying he’d offer his skills in the open market if his NIL compensation wasn’t increased. His agents spoke to LifeWallet CEO John Ruiz, who is bankrolling 111 deals with Hurricanes athletes, and Wong is staying … for now. Ruiz says he didn’t renegotiate, thankfully. “Glad Wong didn’t enter the portal,’’ he told ESPN. “This is a great youngster and his mom is amazing. The deal remains the same, however, and as I said day one, I will help him get other NIL deals.” Wong led Miami to the Elite Eight last season, but he’s at the wrong school. Ruiz and other donors are football boosters first.

     Bill Self has no such problems at Kansas, where basketball is religion. But he also knows the portal could burn him as easily as it helped him win a national championship — after Remy Martin fled Arizona State for the Jayhawks. Don’t be shocked if Self, who approved pay for players when the practice was illegal and has been investigated for years, follows Villanova’s Jay Wright out the college door at some point. NIL might be the end of him.

     “I think it’s bad,’’ Self told a Houston TV station. “In theory, it’s good — freedom of movement, all this stuff. I think sometimes it gives young people a way out without actually trying to fight through some things. … It’s out of control right now where the reason they’re moving is because ‘I can get a bigger NIL deal somewhere else.’ I’m not sure the reason we’re moving are for the right reasons. I think they’re for reasons that sometimes wouldn’t be best for a useful life over time. Because I do think there’s something about us staying somewhere and fighting through some stuff.

     “We haven’t put our arms around it yet. Everybody’s kind of interpreting it their own way, which is totally permissible and legal within the rules. It’s changed the playing field to maybe where it’s not quite as level as what it potentially could be. But I’m all for the kids and their families benefiting from this, there’s nothing wrong with that. But once again, a kid shouldn’t transfer because he can get $50,000 more, or be told he can get $50,000 more somewhere else, and this place has actually done a very, very good job in helping develop him.”

     Somewhere, sometime soon, if it hasn’t happened already, a 10-year-old quarterback will get a call from a booster who supports a major program and wants the kid on campus in eight years. Chances are, the kid will take the money, and in nine years, he’ll enter the portal.

     Never again will I take a tailgate kegger for granted.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.