Pitt HC Pat Narduzzi Calls for NIL Salary Cap

Pitt Panthers head coach Pat Narduzzi has a specific idea for how to keep NIL under control.

PITTSBURGH -- The first Pitt Panthers representative to take the stage at the ACC Kickoff down in Charlotte, North Carolina was head coach Pat Narduzzi. He's earned a reputation for speaking his mind when it comes to the rapid changes that have shook college athletics over the past couple of years and, as a result, was asked what kind of changes he like to see made to Name, Image and Likeness rules that allow athletes to make money off of endorsements and other uses of their celebrity. 

In response to a question about what kind of rules he'd like to see regulate the lucrative NIL market, the Pitt head coach said he'd like to see something resembling the salary cap that exists in certain professional sports, like the National Football League. 

“I think the most important thing … there’s got to be a limit on it," Narduzzi said. "I think everybody wants to play under the same rules and in the National Football League, they have a salary cap. I think you’d want to have some type of salary cap where this is what you’re allowed to spend." 

Narduzzi raised the notion that a bigger school with an inherently larger alumni base has a built-in advantage. The Texas A&M's and Ohio State's of the world, with enrollments north of 70,000 and 60,000, respectively, have an automatic advantage over a school like Pitt (total enrollment 34,000 in 2022) because their NIL apparatuses can draw from a larger donor base, which is likely to lead to more money that positively impacts recruiting. 

"It can’t be based on how big your university is because then we’ll start building more dorms and then what are we doing?" Narduzzi said. "We’ve got education that is a priority and we’re not going to have classes that are full of thousands of kids. We’re going to have small class sizes and we’re going to small alumni groups as they matriculate through the University of Pittsburgh. So I think there’s got to be a lid on the thing. If you’re going to leave the transfer portal open, there’s got to be a salary cap so people can’t go overspend.”

There would likely be some major roadblocks to enacting such legislation, particularly on a national scale. Implementing anything resembling a salary cap could open a can of worms the NCAA has tried to keep a lid on since its inception. Limiting how much a player can get paid could be interpreted as an employer-employee relationship, like what exists in professional sports. 

Employee status could be in the future for college athletes, but the powers that be in college sports will undoubtedly try to fight that off for as long as possible.   

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