NIL continues to be a huge topic of debate and controversy in college football with fans divided on whether it had a positive or negative effect on the sport.
More: What is NIL in college football? Here’s what you need to know
But in recent memory, which has seen so many underclassmen declare early for the NFL draft and leave the college ranks, there is new evidence that NIL might actually keep more players in school longer a long time.
When the deadline to declare early for the 2023 NFL Draft arrived, a total of 82 players had submitted their names to turn professional.
This is a notable drop from the figure a year ago: a drop of around 18% from 2022, this figure being a 22% drop from 2021, and the figure from this year represents a whopping 40% drop from 2019.
In total, the NFL Draft saw a 36 percent drop in the number of early entries – undergraduates and graduates remaining eligible – between the last pre-NIL season and this year.
In 2019, we saw 135 college football players declare early for the draft, with 115 going in early 2020 and 128 in 2021.
Then, in the summer of 2021, NIL came into effect.
In 2022, there was a drop in the number of early entrants, to 100, and this year’s figure of 82 is the first time the number has fallen below 100 since 2016.
Taking all averages into account, that means about three dozen players decided to stay in college football when they didn’t have to, to gain more experience and potentially improve their teams.
Covid-19 could also play a role in these numbers, after the NCAA granted an extra year of eligibility to players affected by the pandemic.
But it’s safe to say that the possibility of pocketing some legal revenue as amateurs may have also played a part in these players’ decisions to delay their move to the pros.
This was not anyone’s intention when the powers that be introduced lousy reforms, which they only did when they felt they absolutely had to.
But the advent of the NIL – despite the lack of any single rule regulating it and the general mood that the system needs to fundamentally change – seems to have had the effect of keeping players in school longer.
We will see if this trend continues in the future.
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