The landscape of college sports was forever changed when the NCAA ruled that players could now make money off of their likeness with the implementations of NIL deals. This polarizing change led to many either loving or hating the idea of NIL in college sports. And former Duke Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski made it clear on Friday that he is directly against how NIL has impacted college sports.
Krzyzewski had perhaps the most illustrious coaching career in the history of college basketball, winning five National Championships in his 47 years with the program. Of those 47 seasons at Duke, only one of them was when the current NIL rules were in place.
Despite his brief experience on how NIL impacts college basketball, Krzyzewski detailed in an interview with Jeff Goodman of Field of 68 that he believes that a big problem with NIL is that there is no leadership regulating it at the moment.
“Who can explain NIL? A lot of people can explain it, but you’d have different explanations,” Krzyzewski told Goodman transcribed by Kyle Boone of CBS Sports. “There’s no leadership. With all the conferences changing, the world has really changed in the last few years, and it begs for leadership. We used to have it from the conference commissioners. But they’re all competing against one another. So there’s not solidarity. For this there has to be common ground.”
Krzyzewski went even further about NIL, saying that college sports are currently “pay for play”.
“Look, it’s pretty much pay for play right now,” Krzyzewski added. “They don’t want to say that, but it is. More power to them. But how is it equitable? In the NBA, NFL, they all have the same rules, they have a salary cap. Can that ever be done in college?”
Krzyzewski is far from the only big name in college sports to speak out against how NIL is currently regulated. We have seen the likes of prominent football coaches including Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin come out against NIL in the past.
