06/24/2026
Athletes deserve to get paid. That is not the problem.
Billy D gave 30 years to Clemson before he became AD at Anderson University. When he played, the school handed him 15 dollars a month for laundry. Today, players are signing six-figure deals before they take a single college snap.
He is not angry about that.
He saw what those kids gave up. Weekends gone. Buses pulling back into campus at 3 in the morning. Bodies wrecked by Tuesday. Most of them coming from homes where there was no money for a movie ticket, much less a meal off campus.
When people frame the NIL fight as athletes versus institutions, Billy D shakes his head. The athletes earned a seat at the table a long time ago.
Here is where it gets harder to defend.
A kid signs for 100 thousand dollars at School A.
School B offers 250 thousand dollars to transfer.
He leaves. No contract. No buyout. No accountability in either direction.
That is not a market. It is not free agency either, which means it has rules and structure. What we built sits somewhere in between, and the in-between is what is pulling programs apart.
You can love the athlete and still question the structure. Both can be true at the same time.
In the pros, the contract protects both sides. The player gets guaranteed money, which means security for his family. The team gets time to build something, which means developing talent and culture. Right now in college, neither side gets protection. The coach can be gone in two seasons. The roster can turn over in a weekend. The kid who actually wanted to stay and finish what he started gets pressured to chase the next number.
Meanwhile, four coaches walked out the door this year with roughly 250 million dollars in buyouts between them. Money that used to go to facilities, tutoring, training tables. Gone.
You do not fix this by going back. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
You fix it by building parameters. Commitments that work both ways, which means mutual accountability. Compensation tied to something more than the next bidder. The kind of structure that lets a coach actually coach and a player actually develop without constant chaos.
Billy D has watched this game from every angle. Player. Coach. Administrator. AD. When a man like that tells you the current model will not hold, it is worth pausing on.
Programs take decades to build, which means investing in people, culture, and relationships.
They can come apart in a season.
What do you think? Like and comment if you have ever watched a program you loved get pulled apart by something that looked like progress on paper. 🏈
Subscribe to David's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/ and watch Episode 22 of The Straight Line to Success coming out this Thursday.
