Ohio State Buckeyes receiver Jeremiah Smith's name was evoked during President Donald Trump's College Sports Roundtable on Friday.
Former OSU head coach Urban Meyer, one of Trump's admitted favorite college football coach, used Smith as a hypothetical during the meeting. Meyer claimed “NIL in its purest form is America" and went on to explain that it's a symptom of American capitalism.
“It’s called capitalism ... If a business owner wants to hire [Ohio State wide receiver] Jeremiah Smith and pay him a certain amount of money, he’s certainly allowed to do that. That’s called capitalism," Meyer said.
Meyer's main aim was to change the pay-to-play system, known as rev-share, because it is essentially "cheating" -- especially since it comes from media rights agreement payouts from the conferences to the schools.
“Get rid of the collectives,” Meyer said. “That’s cheating… That’s not allowed. You’re not supposed to do that. That’s called pay for play.
“(Media rights are) the only thing they’re allowed to do for their student athletes .. They can distribute that however they want. That’s still pay for play.
“I think if the collective goes away, college sports gets better immediately when you say that — if we have antitrust exemption."
Jeremiah Smith's contract was one of several that took NIL to the edge
Smith has an NIL valuation of over $4 million. His deal, like LSU Tigers transfer Sam Leavitt and Texas Tech Red Raiders transfer Brendan Sorsby's, especially, is more than most of the NFL draft pool of players' this April.
Past players are likely livid that this money wasn't on the table for them, and future players are only going to expect more. Disrupting that and taking money off the table could seriously backfire. Then again, the NCAA has a monopoly on the sport, so it's not as though players have another option.
With how uncertain everything is right now across the globe, perhaps this move to take money out of collegiate athletes' pockets -- Trump went as far as saying he wants it to go back to pre-NIL -- is a way to get the youth preoccupied with the world's current chaos instead.