To keep youth in college and away from international competition, particularly in basketball, I believe NIL is merely a deterrent.
The cut they deserve is still denied. I think it's slave mentality."
Former University of Tennessee and NBA player CJ Watson described the NCAA's 1 July liberalization of its name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights policy as that.
College athletes can now make money from sponsorship and public appearances, which were previously banned because,,,
they were thought to compromise amateur sport (in which coaches and administrators make millions of dollars a year).
The news was a victory for collegiate sports reformers. Denial of these rights typified the exploitative economy of US college athletics.
However, celebrating NIL rights – which can earn as little as $3 per endorsement,,,
as the end of racialized exploitation in college athletics ignores Watson's point that privileged white people exploit Black people for profit.
Sociologist Billy Hawkins examined the interaction between predominately white colleges and universities (PWIs) and Black athletes in his 2010 NCAA exposé.
Hawkins believes that big-time college sports reflect long-standing systems of economic, political, social,,,
and cultural coercion, creating a "intercollegiate athletic industrial complex," at PWIs, a new version of a plantation mentality that has exploited Black Americans for profit.