Michigan Defensive Coordinator Shares Candid Thoughts On 'Wild West' NIL Landscape

The Michigan Wolverines hired a defensive coordinator out of the NFL for this year, and he compares the NIL landscape to free agency.

Michigan defensive coordinator Wink Martindale calls a play against Texas during the first half at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor on Saturday, September 7, 2024. / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

The implementation of Name, Image, and Likeness rights in 2021 has been a polarizing subject across the collegiate athletics landscape.

If you are a student-athlete, you love it because it means that you are now able to be paid for playing a sport while also attending college.

If you are the head of a university or a booster club member, you loathe it because it means that you are now bleeding even more millions a year as you now have to pay the student-athletes for playing a sport while also attending college.

If you are just a fan, you love that it has brought more parity to the collegiate athletic landscape, particularly on the gridiron every Saturday, but you loathe that you are now the one helping to foot the bill through the increase of ticket and concession prices.

And if you are a coach, you have no clue how to approach the situation because it is still new and there are no set practices, rules, or guidelines.

For Wink Martindale, defensive coordinator of the Michigan Wolverines, he has experience with the sort of landscape that has been created through the implementation of NIL, equating it to free agency in professional sports.

No current guidelines means that NIL is a lot closer to resembling MLB than the NFL as there is no salary cap, so, for now, teams can continuously spend on the biggest and best players available.

Martindale told Trevor Woods of SB Nation that until there is a salary cap, things are going to be like the Wild West in both transfer portal and high school recruiting, and to this point that has been the case.

“I think it’s unsustainable, where we’re at right now,” Martindale said to Woods, “I don’t know how long it’ll last.”

For now, the answer has been "at least three years," though there could be changes coming sooner rather than later, especially if the big-name schools continue to lose to the "lesser-than" programs.

Until those changes do come, teams must adapt to the standards and practices that are in place in order to better succeed in collegiate athletics.

There will be no Will Smith appearance to save collegiate athletics from the Wild Wild West.

Former MLB player and GM Billy Beane said it best (via Brad Pitt), "adapt or die," and that rings as true in the collegiate athletics landscape as it does in the professional athletics landscape.