College football is now at a critical point where rules intended to provide clarity can also bring back the darkest times for the game. Greg McElroy, an ESPN analyst and former Alabama quarterback with extensive experience in the game’s history, has expressed his concern about new college football regulations that may lead to negative outbreaks.

A Champion’s Perspective on College Football’s Dangerous Gamble

McElroy knows college football’s underbelly better than most. The 2010 BCS National Champion turned ESPN analyst has spent over a decade analyzing the sport’s transformation, from his playing days at Alabama through the Wild West era of early NIL to today’s increasingly regulated landscape. His recent comments about NIL Go, the new Deloitte-managed clearinghouse, paint a troubling picture of potential regression.

“Here’s the unforeseen circumstance that surrounds the NIL Go platform: It welcomes the underbelly of college football back into the sport, potentially,” McElroy warned during his Always College Football podcast.

His concern stems from a fundamental shift in how college athletics approaches player compensation. The NIL market is projected to reach $1.67 billion in 2024-25.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Today’s starting quarterbacks for the top 25 teams earn an average of $821,000 annually, expected to climb to $1.31 million by 2025. But McElroy’s warning suggests this prosperity might be short-lived if new regulations drive transactions underground.

“Right now it’s free. It’s fair. You’re allowed to give guys whatever you want to give them,” McElroy explained, referencing the current system where collectives account for over 80 percent of the NIL market. The former quarterback’s concern intensifies when considering that 72 percent of the collective money flows to football players, creating a massive target for regulatory scrutiny.

The NIL Go platform, launched June 11, 2025, requires all third-party deals exceeding $600 to undergo a fair-market-value assessment by Deloitte. As industry expert Stewart Mandel noted, this threshold captures virtually every meaningful NIL arrangement. The College Sports Commission, led by CEO Bryan Seeley, wields unprecedented enforcement power, including player suspensions and postseason bans.

McElroy’s historical perspective proves particularly relevant. College football’s past is littered with scandals involving illegal payments, from Alabama’s Albert Means case that cost the program $200,000 and resulted in a two-year bowl ban, to Arkansas losing scholarships over the J&H Trucking Service violations.

Former Heisman winner Johnny Manziel recently confirmed what many suspected: “There was a bag man at LSU. There was a bag man at ‘Bama. There was a bag man at every school around the country if you were competing for a national title”.

“But now that every single NIL deal could potentially be scrutinized, it welcomes bad actors back into the game,” McElroy continued, highlighting the paradox at the heart of his concern. If legitimate NIL deals face rejection or extensive review, the temptation to circumvent the system through traditional under-the-table payments becomes more attractive.
KEEP READING: Texas A&M’s KC Concepcion Banks $2,500,000 Just Weeks After HC Mike Elko’s NIL Warning
The numbers support McElroy’s anxiety. With the House settlement providing $2.8 billion in back damages to former players while restricting future earning potential through increased regulation, the pressure on programs to find competitive advantages intensifies. Schools can now pay athletes directly up to $20.5 million annually, but this caps total compensation rather than expanding it.

“So does that now welcome back some of the back alley payments we once saw in the sport that had gone away for the last few years?” McElroy asked, capturing the essential tension between transparency and accessibility.

His warning is powerful because it raises awareness of college football’s cyclical nature. It is the nature of the game that specific actions taken in a good-faith attempt to reform might lead to unexpected consequences and thus repeat the problems they aimed to solve.

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Heidrick actually opens the show by taking a moment to talk about the WNBA. “First and foremost, Caitlin Clark missed five games for the Fever, and it has been a struggle for them,” Heidrick says. “But she was back … [with] 32 points in her big return. … She got hot, she found a rhythm.” Per Heidrick, the Fever needed that.

Later on, Heidrick discusses the implications of the House settlement and how it will affect current and former college athletes. “The NCAA is going to pay almost $3 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 to the present day,” Heidrick informs listeners. She goes onto provide more context for this massive update, including how the funding will be allocated and which programs will benefit the most from this settlement.

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Heidrick closes out the show by discussing how roster limits, another aspect of the House settlement, will affect some women’s sports. Per Heidrick, unless some teams and programs find other ways to generate revenue, “someone is going to get left behind.” As Heidrick warns, “there are going to be cuts, people are going to feel this, because that money just does not grow on trees.”

Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about women’s college basketball, the WNBA, basketball history and much more!

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The 2025 College Baseball World Series rolled along on Monday with a pair of Bracket 2 games in Omaha.

In the opening matchup, Arkansas defeated Murray State 3-0 in an elimination game behind a no-hitter by Gage Wood to keep its title hopes intact.

No. 6 LSU and No. 15 UCLA will follow with a showdown in the winner’s bracket in hopes of staying unbeaten.

Here are the results and highlights from Monday.

Monday, June 16 – Bracket 2

No. 3 Arkansas def. Murray State, 3-0 (Murray State eliminated)

No. 15 UCLA vs. No. 6 LSU, 7 p.m. ET

Updated bracket can be found here.

Arkansas 3, Murray State 0

Arkansas staved off elimination from the College World Series in historic fashion, as starting pitcher Gage Wood threw the third no-hitter in CWS history to help the Razorbacks stay alive.

Wood threw a program-record 19 strikeouts, the most by a single pitcher in a nine-inning CWS game. Out of his 119 pitches, 83 of them were thrown for strikes.

Wood pitched a perfect game through seven innings before Murray State’s first baserunner came in the bottom of the eighth inning on a hit-by-pitch. Still, he remained composed with two more strikeouts in the inning to preserve the no-hitter.

After taking an early 1-0 lead in the third inning, the Razorbacks created more separation with two more runs in the seventh inning.

However, the day belonged to Wood, as he etched his name in the history books with his incredible outing on Monday.