Bob Lineberger

I’ve said this a million times: Name me a coach who ever recruited players because they got As in science and math. Let’s take it a step further: name me a coach who attended a player’s science or math class to scout them like they attend their games and practices. I’ll do the math for everyone: 0. The answer is literally zero. Do coaches care that players do well academically while in college? Sure - but let’s not get all warm and fuzzy about it. Coaches have a vested interest in players doing well academically: because of academic eligibility. Why else would every single rev share NIL agreement I’ve seen and negotiated on behalf of players condition payment on … academic eligibility to play? But, but isn’t rev share and NIL just about the value of a player’s name image and likeness, Ryan?? Yes, yes it is. In fact, every rev share and NIL specifically disclaims that the agreement is for athletic performance. So let’s stop pretending that college athletics is (or ever was) about academics. That’s a party line used by the NCAA that courts are finally and rightly seeing through, much like the NCAA-coined phrase “student-athlete.” As the Third Circuit recognized when it expressly refused to use the phrase “student-athlete” in its 2024 Opinion, the phrase is nothing more than “an NCAA marketing invention designed to ‘conjure the nobility of amateurism,’ assert ‘the precedence of scholarship over athletic[s],’ and ‘obfuscate the nature of the legal relationship at the heart of a growing commercial enterprise.’” To be sure, players are recruited to get Ws not As. Let’s not ever get it twisted.