Jason Campbell Unpacks Impact Of NIL, Transfer Portal On College Game
On the latest episode of their podcast Bleav In Everything Auburn, former SEC Offensive Player of the Year Jason Campbell and ESPN reporter Taylor Davis unpacked what they perceive to be some of the downsides of Name, Image and Likeness deals at the amateur level, and how NIL agreements and the reinvigorated expediency of the NCAA transfer portal could have an adverse impact on student-athletes.
"I come from the school where you get to work and earn, and then you get the reward. They want the reward for the work, I say," Campbell said. "But when they get a reward, but then you don't want to do the work and be accountable to what people have given to you. Then you want to get upset and get mad because sometimes you have to take a deduction. It's a two way street. It's a business. So as soon as they consider this thing now where you can get paid to play college sports, it has now become a business so you can't get mad at the end of the year of a coach comes to you and says, 'Hey, I'm gonna need you to go to the transfer portal.'"
"At the end of the day, you're still winning [in life]. Just like you said, most kids that go to college when they leave school, they got student loan debt for the next 30 years. You won't have any student loan debt and you're able to play a sport that you love, but you're also able to get into the schools off your athletic stuff [that you] couldn't have gotten if it was an academic scholarship, you know, So you got to look at that bliss... you're able to start your life of that 8% better than anybody else in the world at a 20-to-23-year old. Because even if you don't make it to the next level, you can save over six figures in your bank account to start your life off with."
After his run at Auburn, Campbell enjoyed a lucrative nine-year NFL career, split between the Washington then-Redskins, the then-Oakland Raiders, the Chicago Bears, the Cleveland Browns, and the Cincinnati Bengals.
