Ole Miss football head coach Lane Kiffin wishes there was a cap when it comes to NIL.
While Lane Kiffin and the rest of college sports have to adapt to the wonderful world of NIL, the Ole Miss football head coach believes an NIL cap would solve a lot of mounting issues.
Kiffin spoke with Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated on this very topic. He offered a simplistic answer when it came to putting guardrails on name, image, likeness: cap.
"“The thing that seems simple is there’s a cap,” said Kiffin to Dellenger. “How are we not a professional sport? What is the difference? [Players] are making money. They can opt into free agency. We’re a professional sport, and they are professional players. Contracted employees without contracts. They can get out whenever they want. And how is it not being seen that, unless there are changes of rules around caps and contracts, how is every elite college player not at the end of their season [entering the portal]?”"
While Kiffin has been one of the best navigators in the transfer portal era, he knows well that Ole Miss football is never going to be able to keep pace with the deeper-pocketed programs in the SEC landscape. Kiffin and his staff may love a player, but the Rebels are more likely to get outbid for a player’s NIL services than not when it comes to the upper crust of the very conference they play in.
Of course, there are unintended consequences of implementing an NIL cap, but it is not the worst idea in the world either. So let’s discuss it…
Ole Miss football head coach Lane Kiffin wants there to be an NIL cap of sorts
Let’s be real. The amateur model of college athletics is dead. It needed to die, but the murky waters that come from NIL need to have some light shone on them. Kiffin is right in that college football is a professional sport, but one without contracts. Players can hit free agency as often as they please. This makes recruiting next to impossible — an incredibly arduous art form, in essence.
The idea of implementing a salary cap, if you will, is great in theory, but blue-blood programs with rich boosters will always find loopholes around those constraints. They always have and they always will, so the idea that an NIL cap would eliminate this is foolish. What an NIL cap will do is create even more interesting wrinkles in college sports, as “capologists” will now make their way into universities’ athletic departments.
While the implementation of the salary cap era has done wonders in the NFL, there will surely be permutations in the college landscape. The better-run programs will find their rough equivalents of signings bonuses, workout bonuses, roster bonuses, etc. Oh, it will be exhausting, but this is what we all signed up for by putting the final nail into the coffin of the amateur model.
Ultimately, the idea of an NIL cap feels justified. Not every player is going to get the same sort of compensation, as that is not how it works in professional sports. Additional paperwork in this endeavor will surely gum things up, but then again, it is a program’s burden of proof. In short, the programs that are well-run will continue to run laps around those who can never get it together.
An NIL cap gives Ole Miss a better chance, but it will not close the gap on an Alabama or a Georgia.
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