HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — It’s been nearly four years since the NCAA enacted a new policy allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, and just a few weeks since a federal judge opened the door for college athletic departments to pay athletes directly.

Much of the details are still being worked out in the courts. Key components like roster limits, scholarship limits and payment pools are still up in the air.

As is a governing body to oversee all of these new rules, since most current regulation is a patchwork of state laws, legal settlements and NCAA rules.

But, we are starting to see the impacts of college athletes getting paid – and what it means for the enterprise as a whole.

Depending on who you ask, the historical shift is: long overdue for athletes who’ve spent thousands of hours grinding for their craft; late to the party in terms of global sports; the official death certificate for amateurism and the “student” side of “student-athlete”; or, an inevitable reality that has to run wild before it gets reined in and regulated.

To the league itself, it’s a positive step.

When a judge granted preliminary approval for a framework for schools to pay athletes, NCAA President Charlie Baker said it would “help bring stability and sustainability to college athletics while delivering increased benefits to student athletes for years to come.”

The push for college athletes to get paid spans decades, with legal challenges and legislative efforts dating back to at least the early 2000s. Which is surprising, considering the NCAA has been a multi-million dollar industry for several decades, and a multi-billion dollar industry for about a decade.

That disparity is due to the idea of “amateurism,” a word many experts and analysts use when they cite concerns about completely commercializing college sports. That idea goes back more than a century, to 1800s England, where sports were only for the wealthy, and the working class didn’t want them to be able to pay their way to victory.

“I don’t want to say [amateurism] is going to die, but it will certainly be the commercial aspects that are going to permeate,” said David Hedlund, the chairman of the Division of Sport Management at St. John’s University. “I think we’re going to see and hear less and less about amateurism, and college sports are going to look more like professional sports, or a training ground for professional sports.”

The idea that sports are for enjoyment and the love of the game rather than money is a noble one. And players can love the game and make money off their talents at the same time.

But many experts say amateurism has long been dead; the NCAA was just, for whatever reason, the last organization behind the International Olympic Committee to let it die. It’s part of an effort to keep pace with the rest of the world. Overseas soccer and basketball players are spotted when they’re 12 to 14 years old, and go pro when they turn 18.

“We’re in a global marketplace,” said Matt Winkler, a professor and program director of sports analytics and management at American University. “We sort of have to keep up with the other nations if we want to strive and have those great moments in sports for our Olympic teams and our World Cup teams and so forth.”

Coaches have long been compensated, and universities have long profited off their sports teams.

“The money has always been there. It’s just a lot more front-facing now, I think, than it’s been in the past,” Hedlund said.

Some sports analysts say it was quite front-facing in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

March Madness was devoid of any significant upsets or Cinderella teams. For the first time in five decades, every team that made it to the Sweet 16 came from a power conference, including all four No. 1 seeds and all but one No. 2 seed.

And, every team that made it to the Final Four was a No. 1 seed.

ESPN analyst Stephen Smith said NIL deals and the now no-limits transfer portal are to blame for why mid-major programs didn’t see much success, and top-tier schools prevailed.

“If there was no NIL, if there was no portal and you have the mid-majors go 0-6 in the second round, please, we ain’t sweating that,” Smith said. “But when you’re able to point to rules that have been implemented that ultimately shows itself to have inflicted upon the game itself, that’s dangerous.

“College basketball as we knew it – which, to me, is all about March Madness – will cease to exist. Because there’s no madness.”

Experts say there is a serious question mark about the current state of how much colleges can pay to entice players, and how many times players can be enticed enough to transfer.

But not all believe it has to be the death of March Madness or competition in college sports. After all, there’s still Division 2 and 3 universities.

Richard Paulsen, a sports economist and professor at the University of Michigan, said it’s hard to gauge the impact of NIL deals and the transfer portal on competition. Because while the top ten or so power schools may be able to offer the most money to the elite players, there’s still a lot of talent out there.

“The top schools have an advantage in getting the A-level talent, but some of the players that might have sat on the bench at a top school previously could be enticed away with NIL money coming from a second tier school,” Paulsen said. “So I think the impact on competitive balance is maybe a little bit less clear.”

Paulsen says, as a professor, he is worried about the impact NIL deals – particularly million-dollar ones – can have on the students themselves, some 18, 19, 20 years old. It raises the question, does a teenager or young adult need this much money?

Shedeur Sanders is 23 years old, and his NIL valuation at the University of Colorado was roughly $6.5 million. Granted, he’s the son of NFL Hall of Famer and head coach for Colorado Deion Sanders.

But, his 2024 stats were top five in completion percentage, passing touchdowns and yards. Several analysts had him as the top prospect in the 2025 NFL draft, but he slid down to the fifth round, shocking much of the sports world.

Various reports place blame on other reasons – maybe he took more sacks than he should have, maybe NFL executives see traits we can’t see, maybe he bombed interviews with the managers, maybe it had to do with his Hall of Famer dad. And he certainly wouldn’t be the first prospect to get picked later than expected and prove all the teams that passed over him wrong.

But, he’s also losing money by going pro. The iced out, custom “Legendary” chain he wore on Draft Day reportedly cost $1 million.

“It is at least worth noting that five years ago, he wouldn’t have had the online presence that he had, and that could have turned off some NFL teams,” Paulsen said. “Without being in the rooms, I don’t know if it did, but that is possible, and it’s not something that would have been possible even five years ago.”

It begs the question, is it even worth going pro for these top-tier college athletes with insane NIL deals?

In the NBA, new data shows it may not be. The league announced last week just 106 players declared early for the 2025 draft. It’s the fewest since 2015. The number typically hovers around 300.

The drop in early entrants could be lingering effects of the extra COVID year.

But, next year, ten schools will pay their rosters somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, including several million dollars per top player. That’s far more than the players would make if they were a second-round draft pick in the NBA.

Winkler said the combination of competitive rosters and the scope of these NIL deals has more to do with this drop in early declarations.

“These deals are getting so big that unless you’re going to be a first round draft choice, maybe if you’re going to be kind of a lottery pick or a top 10, 15 pick, it would be better for you to exhaust your eligibility on a major team, because you’re going to make more,” he said.

So, it might be financially advantageous for athletes to wait on the pros. Some announcers were even suggesting Sanders should go back to college if the NFL didn’t deem him ready for the show. (NCAA rules prohibit him from doing so anyway; he declared for the draft and signed with an agent).

But what about the fact that these players, who become millionaires, are still students?

Schools are working to provide resources for these athletes so they can get advice on what to do with their wealth, so that they don’t spend it irresponsibly. Which is not to assume all of them would; it goes without saying this money could greatly benefit an athlete who grew up in poverty and change the trajectory for his/her family.

But Paulsen says he worries about the “student” side of “student-athlete” when we start talking about millions upon millions of dollars and students transferring to whichever school offers them the most. Sometimes credits don’t transfer; sometimes players could feel pressure to fulfill their NIL commitments over their studies, when the stakes are that high.

At a young age, these players are under an unprecedented amount of pressure, from their coach, from their family, from their financial adviser, from social media, from broadcast exposure, from stakeholders, from the tens of millions of people who can now legally bet on them.

“Players should be able to leave bad situations, absolutely, and I certainly support players’ autonomy and chasing financial benefit from their athletic talents,” Paulsen said. “But if we’re going to call them student athletes, we should have some emphasis on the student part of that too. Some of these rules that are helping the athlete are hurting the student.”

One of those rules, he says, is the transfer portal. But in addition to harming the students’ academic careers, experts say this also takes a toll on teams and fans of those teams.

Take Nico Iamaleava for example. The star quarterback abruptly parted ways with Tennessee over an alleged compensation dispute with the school’s collective. He demanded an NIL readjustment to $4 million to keep playing for the Vols, and when they said no, he transferred to UCLA, though it’s unclear if they met his demands.

The exit shocked his teammates in Knoxville, with one of his receivers and defensive backs, Boo Carter, telling reporters, “He left his brothers behind.”

But the new pay-to-play system does also beg the question of school loyalty, not just for the players, but the fans too.

Paulsen says roster continuity, players spending all four years playing for one team, has been an endearing feature of sports like women’s college basketball, when you look at the legacies, for example, Caitlin Clark built at the University of Iowa, or Paige Bueckers at the University of Connecticut.

“I do think there’s definitely some extent to which all this player movement can have negative consequences,” he said.

But, some experts doubt fans of teams need to see the same or similar team year to year.

After all, this past NCAA Men’s March Madness Championship between Florida and Houston – the one ESPN’s Smith said featured no madness at all – scored 18.1 million viewers on CBS. That’s up 22% from last year’s championship, and the biggest audience since 2019.

The Final Four games, featuring all No. 1 seeds, ranked as the most-watched games in eight years.

In other words, so far, so good when it comes to college sports fandom.

One thing broadly agreed upon among experts is that competition must remain intact. The Florida-Houston matchup was a nailbiter.

“The biggest thing that would kill sports is if there is no competitive balance,” Hedlund said. “It is known when you have a really great team being a not-so-great team, if the great team probably will win, people don’t want to watch.”

People still appear to be watching. If they stop, one could assume the NCAA would change its course, or it’d be out of all its money too.

Plus, these experts expect regulation soon – possible measures like transfer restrictions, collectively bargained salary caps, conference realignment to avoid concentration, turning athletic departments into LLCs, putting degree completion into bylaws and evening out the number of roster spots, among other rules.

Experts say: be patient, wait for the legal fights to run their course, and wait for the brightest minds in sports – and Congress – to come up with a solution that pleases the players, teams, coaches, schools and fans.

“This is fundamental to the success of sports, so we just need to figure out what rules, what regulations, what governing bodies, how do we facilitate this?” Hedlund said. “We don’t want to ruin sports. That’s what’s at stake here.”

Winkler says it all comes down to the most “hardcore” stakeholders: fans and alumni. If the SEC and Big 10 just ganged up and created their own Premier League and college sports turned into checkbook sports, it could threaten that school pride.

“This year, we definitely saw cracks in the system,” Winkler said. “If the best athletes just go to the top, are [fans] rooting for an inferior product? Are they still going to have that affinity for their school, their team, their degrees, and people that are doing it? This is really going to test that.

“[Schools] have two key pressure points: keep getting a lot of money from TV so you can fund your athletic department, and keep alumni, fans and donors still feeling as engagedThere’s a lot to be worked out in the next several months and probably the next year to really get a boiler plate idea of what the rules and regulations need to be.”

Baseball is like all the other team sports, only more so. The compelling elements of team sport competition are more or less the same: belief in the successful collaboration between people endeavoring to accomplish an extremely difficult goal is deeply nourishing to the human spirit, even to those who are not immediately involved in the competition.

This goal is made all the more difficult to achieve due to a number of very familial pitfalls of the human experience: physiological limits to endurance, injury, illness, mental fatigue, adverse weather, bitchy coworkers, grinding travel, individual missteps and garden-variety bad luck.

There is a junior varsity-level word that is en vogue, “relatable,” that could be used to explain why team sport competition is so resonant with so many people. The better word is “identifiable.” We all identify with the cosmic slings and arrows that befall our sporting heroes, and yet they persevere. When they fail to persevere, they cease to be our heroes. It’s a simple arrangement.

***

Baseball is not the only team sport that exhibits and celebrates all this human suffering and triumph. Hell, it’s not even limited to sport. There are people who walk amongst us who are emotionally invested in “reality” television competition.

But thinking people understand even ice hockey or lacrosse is vastly superior to, say, The Bachelor or America’s Got Talent or Jeopardy in terms of human merit. Not only merit from the competitors, but merit to be admired by those bearing witness. Team sport reliably produces the conditions to admire the best of what humanity has to offer and to best commiserate our inevitable failings.

***

Baseball does this more than any other sport by virtue of playing more games, generally without shelter. Man’s frailty in the face of a vast and mysterious universe filled with detrimental weather, unfair outcomes and unreliable arbiters of justice is reflected unto us every time someone hollers, “Play ball!”

There is more hope and hurt in baseball because there are more days of competition, more opportunity for chaos and chance to aid or crush earnest striving, more examples of grown men absolutely losing their tempers in public. If team sport can generally be said to provide analgesic healing to the human soul, baseball offers the highest dosage. Boring and slow and archaic and riveting and breathtaking and perfect.

***

Nevada baseball has forced us to reconsider hope. Hope is a tender thing, and we guard it with increasing restrictiveness as we age. We learn to disabuse ourselves of hoping our favorite team will win the league or advance to the postseason or make a run at a championship because we have hoped before and have had our tender hopes dashed.

Consider the New York Yankees, 27-time champions of Major League Baseball. Their championship hopes have been crushed at various intervals along the path toward glory every single season since their last World Series win in 2009. For example: a 5-year-old in 2009 who does not remember the last Yankees championship, who has subsequently become a Yankees fan, has endured 15 consecutive seasons of unfulfilled hope. Hope was most cruelly terminated for our hypothetical Yankees fan in this most recent World Series where the Yankees finally won their first League Championship since 2009 only to be steamrolled by a superior Dodgers side.

This is not an appeal for sympathy toward Yankees fans. They’ve had it better than anyone else. But that’s our point. Even Yankees fans, the people for whom the outcomes have been the best over the decades, hope and suffer.

***

Nevada men’s basketball had all of us hoping for an extended weekend in Salt Lake City two Marchs ago in the NCAA Tournament, leading Dayton at halftime. Since that bitter defeat, hope has been in relatively short supply for those who love the Silver and Blue.

Football has found the right leader. But even with the Choate Boat providing needed emotional buoyancy, a star quarterback has departed and the program is still years, not months, removed from its last Mountain West victory. We hope Nevada football will be improved this fall, and we also anticipate this. But we guard our hope very tightly.

Men’s basketball’s most recent season provided a frustrating reminder about the power of hope and the tension one must eat when results do not match hope. We did not guard our hope nearly as tightly for men’s basketball this season, and the results were more painful because of it.

***

Wolf Pack baseball’s recent run, however, has left us no choice. Hope is in the air and on the wind. After a stirring road series win at Air Force two weekends ago, Nevada’s sweep of Fresno State in Reno this past weekend was an audacious challenge to the remaining skeptics.

Fresno State came in as the first place team in the Mountain West and the defending champions. Nevada outclassed them in three straight affairs that could have broken either way. The permutations of baseball over the past three games could have easily provided Fresno State with its own series victory, if not a sweep.

Nevada benefited from three Bulldog errors resulting in two unearned runs scoring for the Pack en route to a 7-5 game one win. The Bulldogs came into the weekend with the best fielding percentage in the conference. Nevada holds that honor now.

Game two was even tighter. Nevada battled back trailing 5-3 in the sixth inning with two runs to pull even at 5-5. That tie held until the bottom of the ninth inning, when Sean Yamaguchi punished a baseball to such a degree you would have thought it owed him money. His solo home run clinched a 6-5 victory.

Game three couldn’t possibly top the first two, except it did. Nevada scored four in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game at eight and force extra innings. Jake Harvey drove in the winning run in the 10th to give Nevada a 9-8 win, a series sweep and now a three-way share of first place with six conference games remaining.

***

Nevada’s five-game conference win streak includes the following comebacks:

* Rallying from a 14-4 fifth-inning deficit to win 17-15 at Air Force

* Rallying from a 5-3 sixth-inning deficit to win 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth versus Fresno State

* Rallying from an 8-4 ninth-inning deficit to win 9-8 in 10 innings versus Fresno State

One can journey through an entire season of college baseball and not collect two such results. Nevada has three in the past five conference games. We are left with no choice but to hope.

***

What, then, are we hoping for Nevada baseball?

Mountain West baseball hope is tough. While the conference has put football teams into the national playoff (Boise State) and men’s basketball teams into the national final (San Diego State) in very recent memory, MW baseball has not put a team into the College World Series since TCU’s run to Omaha in 2010.

Nevada baseball last appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2021. That was also its last MW regular-season title. Nevada has not played in the postseason since the 2022 Mountain West Tournament. Making an appearance in the conference tournament was the hope at the start of this season. Now, Nevada not only looks to be on target to return to the conference postseason, it is tantalizingly close to a MW crown.

We cannot know what the future holds for Pack baseball. We can hope for MW championship glory. We can recklessly dare to hope for a deep run in the conference tournament, with a bid to the NCAA Tournament awaiting the winner of that event. Dangerous stuff, no doubt.

But most importantly, we can hope this Wolf Pack baseball ride doesn’t end any time soon.

***

The great Don Ian and I return to the stage this Thursday night at Belleville Wine Bar in downtown Reno. No cover charge. We hope to see you there.

John L. Ramey is the play-by-play voice of the Nevada Wolf Pack. You can listen to him broadcast Nevada football on 105.7 FM KOZZ, Nevada men’s basketball on 95.5 FM The Vibe and Nevada baseball on 630 AM FOX Sports. You can enjoy John’s writing at John Ramey Media. Follow him on Twitter @John_L_Ramey.

“I just love soccer,” she said. “I’ve only been playing for a total of four years. My friends and family say I smile more and, believe it or not, I don’t feel as much pressure on the soccer field.”

After a visit to Division III Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, Tracey felt right at home and knew that was the right choice.

“The campus is absolutely beautiful, (but) it’s not huge, so it’s easy to get around,” she said. “The professors I met were very friendly, and the weather is warm and no snow,” she added with a smile.

And what about the soccer program?

Submitted photo
In this file photo, Eisenhower goalie Tracey Jakubczak makes a save during a soccer game last season.

“They made me feel really welcome,” Tracey added. “They seemed like they are a close team and the coaches are just fantastic humans.”

Tracey is the daughter of Wendy MacQueen and Ryan Jakubczak of Russell/

“It’s exciting to think she is now a college student athlete. I know that there is going to be a period of adjustment for sure, and with how hard she works, she has to be careful to not let herself get burned out in the process, but this has been her dream, so I know she will give it everything she has in her to be successful in the classroom and on the field,” Wendy said.

Ryan, a former college athlete himself, is fully aware of what his daughter has ahead of her, but hasn’t lost focus of just what Tracey has accomplished.

“She is just a natural athlete. She has only been playing soccer for the last four years. I’m just so incredibly proud of her. Tracey will have to learn to manage her time, but once she figures that out, she’ll be fine.”

Tracey’s job protecting the net aligns perfectly with her career goal, as she will major in administration of justice with the goal of ultimately becoming a K-9 police officer.

“I’d like to stay in North Carolina,” she said. “I would love to play soccer professionally for a few years, if possible.”

Tracey’s high school soccer coach, Faith Johnson, has no doubt that Tracey can be successful at the college level.

“She is a natural athlete, her awareness on the field and ability to think steps ahead of what is actually happening is impressive,” Johnson said. “Catawba is getting an amazing person and a talented soccer player. Tracey just leaves a positive impression on everyone she meets. We will certainly miss her in the net for us this year, but I can’t wait to see how she prospers in this next chapter.”

Being nine hours away from home doesn’t bother Tracey, but her parents know that will be a challenge to see her play in person.

“It will be difficult for sure, but with technology to help us, we will do our best to see her whenever we can,” Ryan said. “Her mom has made a career change to be more available. I made the decision to quit my job and start a small business to have the freedom to participate in her college experience.”

Tracey Jakubczak may be a day’s drive from home, but she can’t wait to get started.

“It’s going to be a challenge for sure, but I’m ready for it,” she said with a smile.

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Mayor Ezra Nanes issued a proclamation that named May 14 and 15 as Centre Gives and invited community members to participate.

Centre Gives is a 36-hour online giving event meant to highlight nonprofit organizations within Centre County through helping to raise funds and sharing fundraising practices. The event is set to begin on May 14 at 8 a.m. and end on May 15 at 8 p.m.

“Since its inception, Centre Gives has infused over 19.7 million dollars into local nonprofits, providing essential operational support for missions across the arts, animal welfare, education, the environment, Health, and Social Services,” Nanes said. “What began with 74 participating nonprofits has grown to over 220 in its 14th year, with more than 131,500 donations made during 468 hours of giving-reflecting the strength, growth, and enduring generosity of our community.”

The proclamation states that donating a minimum amount of $10 to one’s “favorite” nonprofit organization participating in Centre Give would make them eligible to earn prizes as well as a greater share of the $500,000 stretch pool provided by the Centre Foundation and the Hamer Foundation. 

Molly Kunkel, the president and CEO of the Centre Foundation, discussed Centre Foundation’s mission at the meeting and asked community members to donate during Centre Gives.

“Centre Foundation believes that everyone can be a philanthropist,” Kunkel said.

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