Those in trenches know real problems with NIL, and some in Congress starting to finally get it

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About an hour into the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Name, Image & Likeness on Tuesday at the Hart Senate Office Building in Room 216, some light started coming through the chambers.

"With all due respect," NCAA president Charlie Baker said to Walker Jones, who is the head of "The Grove" collective at Ole Miss. And the booster-run collectives are at the root of all the evil of NIL. Jones says he is fixing that with his conglomerate with two dozen other collectives around the country.

"We do not participate in the recruiting process," Jones claimed, and I almost started laughing. "That is best left to coaches and athletic directors under the strict watch of the NCAA."

Then I really started laughing.

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Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, arrives for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Name, Image, and Likeness, and the Future of College Sports," in Hart Building on Tuesday, October 17, 2023.  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Jones’ comment was the NCAA’s original guideline toward NIL back in the summer of 2021 when all this supposedly legal cheating started under the guise of athletes making money off their name, image and likeness. Only the elite college athletes in a few sports should make money because they are the only ones people would want to pay for their name, image and likeness.

Collectives give money to virtually all football and basketball players – even the ones not playing yet, or who are not any good. Check some of LSU’s defensive backs, for example. They’re actually being paid. And you can bet that NIL cash is either promised or on