Former NFL star JJ Watt On Monday, the NCAA called for the first time referring to collegial athletes as students.
Watt, in a post on X, pointed to the money that the organization deserves, the arrival of name, image and parable (NIL), the transfer portal and the cross-country travel teams have to make.
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Arizona Cardinals Defensive End JJ Watt, #99, responds after a loss on the Patriots in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on December 12, 2022. (Patrick Breen / The Republic / USA Today Network)
“At some point the NCAA needs To drop the ‘Student First, Athlete Second’ Charade, “wrote the former Wisconsin Badgers-star.” Billions of dollars, zero, transfer portal (free desk), travel cross -country skiing for midweek competitions …
“Education is not the most important focus. Admit it and call it what it is. A company. Run it as such.”
When an X user noticed that Watt’s Point only seemed to refer to the best players in the best programs, Watt agreed.
“That is exactly my point,” Watt added. “We have children who do not ‘earn money’ and never go professional, but they travel midweek through the country for ‘conference games’, transferring schools, sacrificing studies for sport, etc. This is not about what does best for the student.”
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Arizona Cardinals Defensive Lineman JJ Watt, #99, comes to the field prior to a match against the Patriots in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on December 12, 2022. (Patrick Breen / The Republic / USA Today Network)
Many college coaches in the NCAA ranges have repeated the point of Watt.
Former Alabama Crimson Tide Football coach Nick Saban tore the treatment of zero in college sports in February 2024.
“What we have now is not a university football-not university football as we know it. You hear someone using the word ‘student athlete’. That does not exist,” Saban said in an interview with ESPN.
He added that collectives on college sports “had nothing to do with name, image and similarity.”
ESPN analyst Nick Saban before the match between Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Penn State Nittany Lions in the Orange Bowl in Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on January 9, 2025. (Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images)
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“Just as an NFL player has a contract or a coach has a contract, something that exists, so you don’t have all these robberies of schedules and mass movements,” he said. “I wonder what fans are going to say if they don’t even know the team from year to year, because there is no development of teams, just bringing in new players every year.”
Ryan Morik from Fox News has contributed to this report.
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