One College Football Coach Caught in NIL Chaos Supports Trump’s Efforts for Reform

Tony Sanchez began his second season as head football coach at New Mexico State University this week, hoping two important goals are accomplished: a successful campaign for his Aggies and a measure of stability amid the chaos sweeping college sports due to NIL deals and multiple transfer portals.As the leader of a mid-major program, Mr. Sanchez faces the constant challenge of seeing his top talent poached by wealthier, higher-profile schools, while simultaneously hunting for overlooked players to fill those gaps. With money now at the center of everything and with little regulation on how it’s distributed, Mr. Sanchez is among those supporting President Trump’s recent executive order aiming to limit NIL deals.“I 100 percent believe in what he’s doing,” Mr. Sanchez told The New York Sun. “He might be the only person that can actually do something to at least settle things down. Right now, the way the rules are changing at the pace that they’re changing, it doesn’t make sense.”According to On3 NIL valuations, Arch Manning will earn $6.8 million to quarterback the Texas Longhorns this season, while Carson Beck will be paid $4.3 million to be the quarterback at Miami. Jeremiah Smith, a wide receiver at Ohio State, has a $4.2 million valuation. Logan Fife, who previously played at Fresno State and Montano, will be the NMSU quarterback this year. His NIL valuation is estimated at $50,000, sources told the Sun.Players at Power 4 schools commonly earn seven-figure deals. Mid-major schools normally don’t have those resources, which is why players are looking to impress enough to move up to richer deals. Mr. Sanchez, like other coaches around the nation, can deal with that. But the uncapped amount schools can offer backup players, combined with transfer portals in the winter and spring, has created what Ms. Sanchez considers an unfair and unsustainable climate that he hopes Mr. Trump’s influence can correct.“We’re never going to have what Texas is giving you,” Mr. Sanchez said. “But at some point, there’s got to be a cap. If there’s no cap, there’s no parity at any level. Bigger schools can take some of your better players to be their second or third string players and pay them a handsome amount of money. For a kid who has never had anything, he sacrifices his opportunity to play for dollars. You can’t blame a kid for that. But at the same time what does it do to the quality of the game? And it’s so nonsensical that we have two transfer portals. Who does that? The NFL doesn’t do that with free agency. It doesn’t make sense.”In signing the executive order, Mr. Trump called the current NIL landscape an “out-of-control, rudderless system.” It seeks to ban “third-party, pay-for-play, payments to collegiate athletes,” while allowing them to earn income from brand endorsement deals. It also seeks to preserve “scholarships and collegiate athletic opportunities in women’s and non-revenue sports.”Mr. Trump also wants the National Labor Relations Board to clarify initiatives to make college athletes university employees and form labor unions.Many smaller schools like New Mexico State, which competes in Conference USA, have formed NIL collectives that seek donations from alumni and their local communities to offer endorsement deals to athletes.Coaches who once used the four-year educational experience and college lifestyle to recruit players, now lead with dollars and the potential for more dollars. “If you’re going to find a way to have success in this day and age at a non-Power 4 school, you have to change your approach,” Mr. Sanchez said. “We never want anybody to leave, but we’ve got 17 former players at Power 4 schools making $7 million. We had an offensive lineman go to Kentucky for $1.5 million. We tell them that story. We tell them these are the opportunities you have coming to New Mexico State. It takes the BS out of the room. You’ve ripped the Band-Aid off and it’s an open conversation.”Mr. Sanchez, who served as the head coach at Nevada-Las Vegas between 2014 and 2019, said his staff was better prepared for this season after replacing Jerry Kill at NMSU before the start of the 2024 campaign, when the Aggies went 3-9. “We lost a lot of players before I got the job last year, and then we lost a lot of players after the spring,” he said. “This year we had an idea what might happen, and we planned for it. We were way more prepared. I think we have a chance to have a pretty good team.”Meanwhile, he hopes Mr. Trump’s executive order can stabilize the NIL landscape. “We have the second most viewed sport behind the NFL,” he said. “We have a great product. Let’s keep it that way.”

One College Football Coach Caught in NIL Chaos Supports Trump’s Efforts for Reform

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