You’ve probably heard somebody you know use the phrase “Name, image, and likeness is ruining college football”.
If it isn’t NIL, then they’re blaming the transfer portal, or conference realignment, or something else that’s new.
But the translation is the same for all of it: change is hard.
NIL money removes the illusion that kids were picking our school because they really wanted to live in Eugene, Oregon; the transfer portal gives players more agency than ever, and greatly diminishes the promise and importance that high school recruiting once held; and conference realignment has helped me avoid ever having to travel to Pullman.
So I guess it’s not all bad.
These seismic shifts happened fast, and they’ve particularly helped to make the last few bowl seasons feel empty and way less magical than they used to.
Or at least, that’s what we’ve thought.
But the reality is that Christian McCaffery and Royce Freeman were opting-out of bowl games long before players were ever getting money (out in the open).
And the advent of the playoff was the real nail in the coffin that turned games like the Quick Lane Bowl into simply a quirky three-hour ad, when in the past they were both a quirky three-hour ad and a semi-valuable springboard into the next season.
But all of a sudden, in an era where NFL hopefuls and transfer players can seldom be bothered to play in an inconsequential postseason game, Bo Nix and Bucky Irving seem curiously interested in beating Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl.
I’d love to believe that they just really love being Ducks—or that they have a great personal disdain for either or both of the Jerrys Falwell—but sometimes the obvious answer is the right answer.
Why would they risk injury and NFL Draft position to play against Liberty Biberty? I’d say we can probably thank none other than everyone’s favorite scapegoat: name, image, and likeness.
Other than my own intuition, there were a few social media announcements that tipped me off to the possibility of Bo & Bucky’s “Operation: Put Butts In Seats.”
First, this sleek Instagram reel looks pretty consistent with every other piece of Oregon social content from this year, so unless Buck is an after effects wizard, maybe they got some in-house production help:
I’d also assume that State Farm Stadium and the Fiesta Bowl were much happier to put Bo in this graphic rather than Austin Novosad:
And the most obvious piece of evidence in my opinion is this clip of Bo talking directly to the camera and the Duck Twitter account explicitly adding the link to buy tickets:
Based on those posts, along with my personal vibes, I would guess that our NIL collective or someone else like them might have offered our two most electric offensive weapons some kind of bonus to incentivize them to play and make a little extra Christmas money.
And if that’s the case, it could set a precedent that just might make NIL the unlikely hero of bowl season after all.
You either die an existential threat to college football, or you pay players enough the equivalent to a second or third round signing bonus…
No longer will once-storied events like the Duke’s Mayo Bowl have to stoop to such demeaning lows like drowning the winning coach in a tub of mayonnaise.
Instead of being the thing that widened the gaps between the haves and the have nots, NIL could be the thing that maintains momentum for smaller programs through December, and truly sets them up for the future.
Nothing against Novosad, but if we’re already bringing in Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore next year, we probably had to hand Bo a blank check if we expected anyone to make trip to the desert.
And I still think it’s kind of crazy for him to come back, but hey, if he wants to wear green and yellow one more time, who am I to stop him?
In short, NIL didn’t ruin bowl season, it just might save it.
Go Ducks.
I think that this is what the Bowls themselves should be doing, paying players to not opt. That's great if the school can do that, but the bowls should be incentivived to pay players to play. They make enough money and ESPN owns most of the bowls, so the money should be there.