For the longest time, college basketball in the United States was seen as a platform for athletes to make a name for themselves so they could play for the biggest franchises. The idea was simple. Use the platform to prove to sponsors and investors that you are capable of making them millions. The downside was that they were not getting paid for their efforts. All that changed in 2019, when the Supreme Court passed the ‘Fair Pay to Play Act’, allowing athletes to profit from NIL opportunities.
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The next two years saw public support for players profiting from endorsements reach peak fever. And the NCAA officially made it a policy in July 2021. Since then, college athletes have managed to profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness.
However, there are critics too. Do people still complain that getting paid could destroy the ambition of college athletes? Yes. But here’s the flip side. Athletes who don’t make it to the big leagues are compensated for their blood, sweat, and tears.
Allisha Gray is one of the many who’ve weighed in on this topic. Appearing on the Club 520 podcast, the WNBA star joked that she would have been cruising in a Ferrari if NIL had existed back in her college days.
“I would have used the money nicely,” Gray told the hosts. “Man, I would be dressed, rolling up in Ferraris and all that,” she added, lost in wishful thinking. Gray started playing college basketball in 2014. At this point, the public outcry to pay them was only beginning to gain some momentum.
When the host floated a hypothetical scenario in which Gray could have been paid about half a million dollars, he asked her if she would have blown through it all. Gray responded with a chuckle and said, “I’mma live the dream.”
Normally, a half-million-dollar amount sounds like a dream to a college athlete, but it is nowhere close to the biggest NIL deals that have been made.
According to reports, Duke star Cooper Flagg has made $28 million from NIL opportunities. “He had a $13 million deal with New Balance and then $15 million with Fanatics,” revealed longtime sports journalist Howard Bryant.
This is not to say that if Allisha had this kind of money or any other form of cash back then, she would have just led a lavish lifestyle. “I’mma look out for them too but you know I have got to treat myself nicely.”
Gray also admitted that when she was getting into college and the offers were rolling in, she was happy to let her friends open the letters for her.
“And then it got to a point where my dad was like, ‘All right, now like you need to narrow the list down and let these people know like where you have an idea going,‘” Gray laughed, noting, “And then once that happened, I chose the first college I was gonna go to.”
Before anybody could respond, Gray beat everyone to the punch. “Everybody makes mistakes,” she admitted, still laughing. She undoubtedly learned from her mistakes while building a name for herself. Her WNBA career is proof of that.
