Michigan State Athletics has seen benefits in its sports programs over the last few years, through its Spartan Nation NIL fund. MSU’s athletic teams and athletes have grown as a result of name, image, and likeness (NIL) and the continuing impact it’s having on college athletics.

Darien Harris, MSU’s Assistant AD/Business Development and NIL Strategy, says that the athletic department has done a great job at adapting to the constant changes in college sports.

“We’ve done a great job of that over the past few years with some transformational players that have entered our program that have come from the transfer portal or have decided to attend our school,” Harris said

Michigan State has benefited through their team store as of recently. In March, the MSU NIL team store was ranked in the top four in selling schools.

Athletes from several programs at MSU have also benefited from the team store. Former Michigan State guard Jase Richardson’s jersey was the top earning male athlete in March.

Photo Courtesy: @SpartyNIL on “X”

Smaller sports athletes have also benefited from the NIL team store including MSU softball’s Madison Taylor and Track and Field runner Abigail Wiegers. Six members of the MSU gymnastics team also have their own apparel, including t-shirts and jerseys, at the team store. Merch at the store generally is worth as low as $39.99 to as high as $119.99.

Keith Miller is the Vice President of Influxer, a company that helps collegiate athletes navigate NIL. Influxer was established three years ago, starting with a partnership with Texas-Corpus Christi and is now currently partnered through 510 schools across Division I to III. The company has also partnered with just shy of 50,000 student athletes.

Influxer is currently working with six Big Ten schools and while they aren’t partnered with Michigan State, they’re currently in talks of working with them in the future.

Miller believes that Michigan State is a brand name and gets why schools feel like them are falling behind when competing with other schools. He doesn’t believe that MSU is in a bad situation and hopes that Influxer can help the school strengthen their NIL approach.

“They’ve got a great NIL director, a great admin staff, they’ve got a great name. They’re in a position to do a lot of very cool stuff, hopefully we’re a part of that story, we hope to add to the experience of the student athletes there and do some good work there,” Miller said.

Photo Courtesy: @msu.nil.store on Instagram

MSU hired Jon Dykema as its new executive senior associate athletic director/student-athlete management and assistant general counsel on Feb. 19. Dykema served as the director of football compliance and lead football counsel for the Detroit Lions for 14 years. He also worked under MSU coach Tom Izzo as a student manager.

He also experienced working at other college athletic programs including spending four years at Utah and a semester at Akron. Harris is confident that the addition of Dykema can further strengthen MSU’s NIL approach.

“He’s been great to work with, he’s been bringing a level of expertise from a pro side, that’s been advantageous to us going forward, especially in this day and age with the way things are going. We’re excited to see what he’s going to add to our department,” Harris said.

Along with NIL changing the impact of collegiate athletics, the transfer portal has also had a drastic effect on college athletes and has had its negative impacts.

Over 2,000 college football and basketball players have entered the transfer portal after the conclusion of the 2024-25 season.

Roster spots have become unavailable, as not every football and basketball athlete gets the opportunity to commit to a school that can help them succeed both athletically and academically.

Harris said that this has become a major problem with NIL and that MSU is doing what it takes to make sure their athletes are supported, whether they decide to stay or transfer out.

Photo Courtesy: @msu.nil.store on Instagram

“There are going to be some athletes that don’t land somewhere, and that’s a scary thought process, to where you were at a school and all set, and you decide to make a switch, and you get lost in the abyss of the portal. The only way that we can best support them is to say we’re there for them and we’re always going to be willing to help pretty much no matter what, and to me that’s the job,” Harris said.

Collegiate football and basketball are the two sports that have benefited the most from NIL and the transfer portal. Harris believes that while it is important for these two sports to receive the benefits, MSU has made sure that every sport on campus is represented and benefiting from NIL.

“The way that we approach it here is that everybody has the opportunity to participate in NIL. It doesn’t mean the money is going to be the same for every athlete; the way we look at it is not focusing on which sports generate the most revenue,” Harris said.

Despite MSU adapting to the impacts of NIL and the transfer portal, many critics and fans argue that the athletic department isn’t doing enough to evolve like other Big Ten universities and is falling behind.

This has caused concern among the Spartan faithful, who worry that MSU won’t be able to compete on the playing field in high-revenue sports like football and basketball in the future.

Photo Courtesy: @msu.nil.store on Instagram

Harris believes that despite the criticism, MSU is doing what it takes to compete at the highest level with NIL both on and off the playing field.

“I think we’ve shown with our play that we can compete in this new landscape, and we’ve showcased that. I think folks get caught up in glitz and glamour, and that doesn’t always determine what you have from a resources standpoint,” Harris said.

Miller says he gets why some Michigan State fans feel like the school is being left behind when it comes to NIL, the transfer portal, and the continuing changes in college athletics.

“If I were to give some encouraging words to the Michigan State fan base if they’re not alone, this is happening across the country. The smaller tier Division I schools feel like they’re getting poached by the bigger schools,” Miller said.

Last year, we were over the moon with the return of the EA College Football franchise. We gave it a very glowing review overall, at least as it pertained to reintroducing the classic game.

And, in one-off tilts, it still held up pretty well. However, familiarity does often breed contempt, and the longer you played, the more you noticed the raft of missing features, unnecessary gameplay nerfs, and baffling lack of QOL and immersion mechanics that made the experience veer from stale to frustrating.

Among them:

• The lack of formation subs, a feature in every previous installment
• The lack of real FCS programs, and the ability to “step down” in prestige from your program
• Teambuilder locked behind online-only gameplay
• Horrendous blocking mechanics
• Borked physics engine, particularly with leaping ability and the ballistic arc of passing trajectories
• Uneven difficulty levels
• The lack of a tutorial
• God-mode opponent DB and woeful PC WR route-running, particularly notable on PA passing.
• Bare bones records, historic stats, season stats — even the inability to scout your opponent
• Generic awards, broken recipients, and greatly overdrafted players across the board.
• Online matchmaking, and so many others.

It wasn’t perfect, in other words. Worse, so many of these features could have been added or fixed with a hot patch or never made sense to omit in the first place — aside from sheer laziness.

Still, this January, EA said that they were listening to player feedback and would be “instituting changes.”

So, what has been changed, at least that we know of? Besides the welcome addition of a High School Road to Glory mode, the answer is “not much that won’t earn EA a few extra bucks.”

How so? Check out the creeping number of pre-order editions, Gacha pay-to-win packages, XP boosts, elite recruits, Ultimate Teams and a dizzying array of other game features paywalled behind a premium price point and augmented by microtransactions.

Then, we discovered a “partnership” deal, whereby every game would functionally become an in-game advertisement for Lowe’s. Did we discover this from EA? No. It was Lowe’s who blew the whistle:

More details about the game have emerged from an unexpected source. The home improvement chain Lowe’s has announced a collaboration with EA Sports to feature its branding in CFB 26, along with the newest EA Sports FC and Madden NFL titles.

Lowe’s branding will appear in these games “across multiple gameplay experiences,” the retailer said. For CFB 26, Lowe’s branding will show up on the broadcast overlay for the Stadium Pulse feature. This feature aims to replicate the pressure of playing an away game by making certain gameplay elements more difficult for a short period of time. Lowe’s said this draws “meaningful parallels to the passion homeowners feel when enhancing their own spaces with Lowe’s.”

What has not been discussed is the commitment to fixing the core gameplay loop, game balance, matchmaking, computer logic, recruiting, NIL, or even immersive quality of life features. Because I very much doubt any of that will be addressed — they are certainly not included in the developer’s notes.

What began last year with so much promise is shaping up to be not the good launching point towards rebuilding a franchise that we had hoped for. Rather, I fear we are staring at an annualized vehicle intended to sell add-ons, and wrapped up in a package that is just good enough to keep a core audience buying just enough games and microtransactions to do it all again next year.

That has been at the heart of the EA business model for a decade with FIFA and Madden. Expect nothing different with CFB ‘26…they’ve given us little reason to think anything will change, or that meaningful improvement will come this time around.

I’d like to say that I’m disappointed. But you can’t be disappointed if your expectations were low to begin with.