“Pay for Play”: Valuing Bodies and Losing Community in the NIL Capitalist Landscape of the 2024 College Football Season

Abstract

As of the beginning of the 2024 college football season, student-athletes are still not being paid directly as employees. However, changes made official in 2021 to the rules around the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policy within college athletics have changed the landscape of the industry. Endorsement deals and commercial use of an athlete's likeness, once forbidden, are now legal. The introduction of this form of economic opportunity presents major implications for the future of the sport that was once heavily grounded in community-based ideals. I argue that it has taken a few years for these NIL changes to fully come into effect, with the 2021-2023 seasons acting as an incubation period for NIL college football. Teams and players alike took time to adapt to the new rules and determine the most advantageous ways to use them for a competitive or financial advantage. I consider the 2024 season to be the pinnacle of the effect of NIL on college football. It has left us with almost entirely new systems of recruiting and valuing young athletes. In this thesis, I researched the economic and social landscape of the 2024 college football season. I gained insight into how the new systems came to be and how athletes are navigating the uncertain waters. I discovered that the creation of a ‘pay for play’ system has taken over the sport, where teams use NIL as a way to pay their players like professional athletes. The result of which has created a capitalist frenzy with no regulation. The rise of these cultural ideals focused on money has led to two major social shifts: the loss of community and a change in how college athletes' bodies are valued.