During a Tuesday appearance on Real America's Voice's "Just the News, No Noise," U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) continued his warpath against the current state of college athletics by saying an anonymous football player had already blown through his name, image and likeness (NIL) funds and was demanding additional money just to travel to an away game.
The former Auburn football coach said that was just one example of why NIL had gotten "out of control."
"I don't think that you'll ever take the money back, but I do think that we have to do something about the transfer portal," Tuberville outlined. "The last time I looked, this was supposed to be about education, not supposed to be about making money and playing football and not worrying about education. So, I'm working with the president. The president wants to do something about it. I don't know what we can get done, but if we stay down this same path ... we thought there was a lot of rule-breaking back in the day when you couldn't give any money — now, you're having people going around breaking rules. We have these agents that are not certified, that are taking money."
"I know of one school a couple weeks ago that a kid got to the bus going to an away game to the airplane, and he said, 'I'm not going unless you pay me $50,000. I've already spent my $500,000 you gave me four or five months ago,'" he added. "I mean, this is out of control."
According to Tuberville, NIL in its current form is "ruining" college athletes' lives because they aren't being taught how to manage the substantial money they may never experience again, as most are not going pro.
"A lot of these kids aren't paying taxes," he continued. "I know for a fact that they're getting money, and they're spending it and going, 'Oh wait a minute, I had to pay taxes on that?' I mean, you can't make it up what's going on right now. There's no leadership from the NCAA. Somebody should be standing up, going, 'Hey, we have to stop this and give some guidance to these kids.'"
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