College football coach has very honest opinion about NIL deals
The new NIL rules have forever changed college football, giving players more opportunity to put some real money in their pockets while staying as amateurs.
Or are they? After seeing Ohio State quarterback CJ Stroud take ownership of a $150,000 Bentley, UL Monroe coach Terry Bowden believes any athlete who can earn that kind of swag is anything but an amateur.
"When a quarterback is making six figures and driving a Bentley, he's a professional athlete," Bowden told Paul Finebaum.
Officially on the books, college football players are still very much amateurs: NCAA rules still strictly forbid schools from paying anyone to play any sport.
But that won't stop other parties from gladly putting some serious money, or luxury cars, into the hands of college athletes who can give them exposure.
For more than a century, there have been countless attempts to sharply distinguish professional athletes from amateur ones, and that debate has only become more intense since the advent of NIL.
Many coaches have raised concerns about how NIL is changing college football for the worse, while other officials in the sport have made appeals to Congress to create a single, binding piece of legislation regulating the practice.
But with disagreements on how to do that still existing between the Republicans and Democrats, it's unlikely they'll come to a decisive agreement on what that looks like anytime soon.
Which means this is what NIL will look like for the foreseeable future.
More from College Football HQ
What is NIL? Here's what you need to know
Ohio State quarterback gets $150,000 Bentley in NIL deal