‘It Welcomes the Underbelly Back’ — Greg McElroy Sounds Alarm on NIL Go’s Risk for College Football

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.

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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.
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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.