I think the biggest thing for the people that seemed to think NIL wasn't going to be what it is, was just this misunderstanding of what college athletics are really like.
Even then, people don't really think that hard about some of this stuff because it's normalized. So this seems strange, but the other stuff was like oh yeah why not do that. Case in point, I brought up the 47 million golf practice facility costs and a poster called me out because I didn't do a break down, he wanted to make it known that eventually boosters would pay the full 47 million (I'm still the only person I've seen complain about it).
Well, alright. What's the ROI on a golf practice facility at the University of Alabama look like? Alabama doesn't have that big oil money, but stuff like that still happens at Alabama, and other universities all the time. A lot of it really is lavish wastes of money. Often for programs that do virtually nothing of note, you won't see them or hear about them, but some booster made them their pet project. Heck, Phil Knight has donated over a billion to Oregon athletics but he didn't funnel 100% of that into the football team, it went all over.
The biggest ROI though actually is the football team! For instance at Alabama, the football team makes over half the income for the athletic department, generates something like 200 million per year for the state, and since only it and basketball actually generate positive revenue, there are only two sports any booster can invest in within the program that actually will get any ROI to speak of, men's basketball and football.
So, I do not like NIL. Not at all. But if you were going to write a check to somehow pay for stuff at an athletic department, and billions of dollars a year to indeed do this across college athletics, the best return is probably via the football program. Look at what Cuban did, he didn't do anything insane with his donation, but he helped propel a team to the championship game. That's going to up attendance, and ultimately earn Indiana more money than he spent.
At least there is some sort of an ROI possible here, unlike some of that other nonsense. Once you appreciate that, you'll see why some are so willing. They've been doing dumb stuff, this is actually smarter than some of it because it's capable of producing tangible results.
This is precisely why NIL was such a bad idea. It gave boosters a pathway to immediately influence outcomes. That is their "return".
