A.G. Gancarski
Name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation and the transfer portal in major college sports continue to perturb Florida’s Governor.
During comments at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, Gov. Ron DeSantis reminisced about the way it used to be during the golden era of college football in Florida.
“It’s tough. I mean, with NIL and transferring and all this stuff,” DeSantis lamented. “It used to just be … all the Florida schools just kind of lock and load, (during) the ’80s and ’90s, even beyond that when you had the Urban Meyer years in Florida. And then it’s like, you know, particularly in the last five or 10 years, so much is going on. There’s a lot of moving parts.”
The Governor has called attention to the increased professionalization of amateur sports in recent years, including saying in 2024 that he wanted to work with other Governors to develop a regulatory “framework” because Congress wouldn’t do it.
DeSantis has griped about student athletes having too much leverage and about Florida programs in recent months on numerous occasions.
“I think this whole NIL may need some guardrails, and the transferring has gotten out of hand. You know, transferring once? Fine, you shouldn’t have to sit out. But to just treat it like a free agency where you don’t know who’s going to come back each year, I think that’s diluted college sports,” he said during other remarks in 2024.
“You get paid for name, image and likeness and stuff, which we supported in Florida. If people are going to make money off you, like, whatever,” DeSantis said in Waukee, Iowa, during his failed presidential campaign.
“But now it’s like, they sit out the bowl games and they do all this other stuff. … We’ve got to do something about that. I don’t know if that’s the right thing.”
