College football is no longer an amateur sport and USC is choosing to embrace it publicly. The Trojans made multiple posts on social media to promote players who resigned with the program.
It is free agency, with every player, every year.
Although this kind of thing has been going on for more than four years, we have not previously seen this kind of brazen announcement. USC decided to go all-in on reality, whether you like it or not.
College football is a professional sport.
Don’t get me wrong. Money has always played a role in college football.
It used to go primarily to the university and to the people in power. Many of the top players in the sport would get a small cut of the pie through secret handshakes and bag drops but the amount was negligible compared to the ad and sponsorship revenue, media rights deals, ticket sales, etc. The athletes were not paid for their Names, Images and Likenesses like they are today.
NIL first came to exist in 2021 but it came without regulation. The NCAA does not have enough power to enforce its own rules on such a large scale and, when it tries, it usually gets bodied in court.
As a result, college football has become a bidding war. Athletes often care more about how much they are going to make than anything else. The school that can offer the most NIL money is best suited to land the top players. Players who aren’t making enough money in their current situation can transfer at will to seek a better paycheck.
Guys like Carson Beck are making more than $3 million for just one year of employment. The bubble is at some point going to burst. It’s not sustainable in the long term.
The introduction of revenue sharing, which allows schools to distribute up to $20.5 million annually across all athletes, is going to help to level out some of the numbers— but it’s not like programs aren’t going to find a workaround. It also creates a professional model that is not managed like a professional model.
USC announced free agent signings.
There have been a number of instances in the modern era of college sports where an athlete who was deciding on whether or not to transfer has reached a new financial agreement to stay at his current school. Pete Nakos reported LaNorris Sellers was in the “final stages of negotiations” with South Carolina just last week.
This is not new. This is how things go in the modern era.
However, the University of Southern California became the first team to say the quiet part out loud. The Trojans posted multiple announcements on social media of players who re-signed with the program as if they were NFL free agents.
That’s a new one. This is the first time a program has ever made this kind of announcement with this kind of language. USC is choosing not to hide behind the guise of amateurism. Welcome to college football in 2025.