Tom Brady Weighs in on College NIL Deals: ‘It’s Gonna Develop a Lesser Player’

Now that the NCAA has given college athletes the ability to sell the rights to their name, image and likeness (NIL) to earn additional income while in school on scholarship, Tom Brady believes “it could balance the powers out a little bit” in college football.

During the most recent episode of Brady’s SiriusXM podcast, “Let’s Go!,” he spoke with cohost Jim Gray about how these new NIL rules will cause a paradigm shift in the game. Student athletes can now do apparel deals, sponsored social media posts, and advertising campaigns. They can sell signed merchandise and start their own businesses, such as youth sports camps.

“Not that these folks shouldn’t be compensated, but it’s gonna lead to a tremendous lack of consistency,” Gray argued. “And we’re gonna have teams good one year and then you’re not gonna know anybody the next year, unlike the building that you had going on in college football.”

Brady pointed out that big schools like Alabama have long had a “monopoly” on the best student athletes.

“There was a lock on so many of those guys,” he said. “And I think maybe there’s more of a kind of dispersion of talent across all the college football. Some teams may try to load up one year. Other teams, maybe some of these mid-level schools, they don’t have the opportunity to pay these players in the same way that some of the bigger schools might. So maybe they recruit a different type of player.”

Beyond the players, Brady also noted that this may cause more frequent coaching changes for college teams as well, if the coaches only want to be hired by the big schools that attract the top talent. That kind of turnover would kill any long-term program-building.

“That actually may have a detriment to the pro game, because if you don’t build the college program, how is a player gonna develop a skill set?” he said. “It’s gonna develop a lesser player to pro football.”