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Scott Stickles

ENC 2135

Ms. Smith

March 26, 2023

The Recent Change In College Recruiting

The world of college sports has been turned upside down since the new rule change on

the NIL rule in NCAA sports. There are many different opinions on whether this is right or

wrong or a good thing or a bad thing. On3 is a website made to bring people news on college

sports, recruiting, and NIL deals. It was created to help inform anyone that cares about these

topics. In one of their, articles ‘It’s a red flag:’ Coaches say recruits focusing on NIL

opportunities is worrisome, it talks about what coaches and recruiters think of the new NIL rule

and how it will most likely end up changing things in the NCAA. For example, it says “Yet,

college coaches-both in football and basketball- are naïve if they don’t acknowledge that NIL is

a significant part of the recruiting process. That’s especially true in today’s recruiting world that

coaches say is riddled with ‘pay-for-play’ NIL deals” (2022, Crabtree). The video on YouTube

“College coaches worry NIL deals will corrupt NCAA sports”, posted by CNBC Television is

also another great artifact that talks about the ways that the NIL deals could be harmful and

needs to be regulated to help not mess up the NCAA. This paper is going to explain how these

two artifacts informed their audiences about the new facts and concepts of the NCAA NIL rule.
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The article ‘it’s a red flag:’ Coaches say recruits focusing on NIL opportunities is

worrisome uses Ethos, Logos, and Pathos to try and convey its message to its audience. The

audience that is targeted for this article is people who are interested in college sports and also

athletes that are currently participating in college athletics or are trying to get recruited for

college athletics. NIL deals are a recent rule change from the past when players were not able to

make money off of their name, image, and likeness, but now they can do so. This has changed

the way that high school athletes are being recruited and how college recruiters recruit high

school athletes. The article contains a lot of ethos in it. Although the article keeps the people's

names anonymous, it informs the readers what sport and conference they are a part of. For

example, “‘We’ve seen so many times that one guy can make a difference in your program,’ a

Pac-12 basketball coach told On3. ‘That’s the battle going through this. If the guy is a five-star at

that position you have to fill, are you willing to play the NIL game from day one if that’s what

they want to only talk about?’” (2022, Crabtree). The article gives us information from the

people that are actually affected by the rule change and are professionals in their industry and are

explaining the pros and cons of the NIL rule. Another example of ethos being used would be, “A

veteran SEC football coach, who’s recruited in three other Power 5 conferences, says there’s a

time and place for discussions about NIL. But if it dominates the discussion and is brought up

first thing, then maybe his school isn’t the right place. ‘I think it’s a turnoff’, the SEC coach said.

‘And that would be the same with the other fringe things that we do in recruiting. If a kid’s not

asking about academics or asking about the offense you play-assuming they don’t know those

things already and it’s early in the recruitment-it can be concerning.’’’ (2022, Crabtree). This is

ethos because if you are coaching a football team in the SEC, you clearly know your stuff since
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the SEC is one of the best, if not the best, conferences in the NCAA for football. Although this

article is very ethos heavy due to it mainly being about what college coaches think about the new

rule and how it will affect recruiting, the author uses logos as well to get the point across to the

audience. Logos is very important in an article like this because the readers need to know the

facts to back these things up so they are more believable. In the article it says, “A recent On3

survey revealed that 30 percent of top recruits would be willing to go to a school that isn’t a

perfect fit from a football or academic standpoint for a NIL deal.” (2022, Crabtree). This quote

informs the audience what percent of players care about NIL deals and money over their

education and what coach they play for, which is the complete opposite of how recruiting used to

be done before the NIL rule. The article also used pathos to convey the audience emotionally that

recruits should not be so focused on the NIL deals during recruiting, but to figure out where they

want to go to become a better student and a better athlete. An example of this in the article would

be, “The ACC basketball coach concurred. ‘I think one thing coaches in both sports are

continually concerned about and continually trying to figure this out is how does this affect the

locker room and the team chemistry,’ the coach told On3. ‘That’s a critical piece. At the end of

the day, we spend a lot of time together. We lay a lot on the line for everybody. The more intel

you can have about the people you’re trying to bring into your program, the better.” (2022,

Crabtree). This article contains some logos and pathos but is very ethos driven. Most of the

article is about coaches talking about what is currently happening in college recruiting and how it

is going to positively and negatively affect the future of college athletic recruiting. The article is

trying to persuade the audience that NIL is not good for college recruiting in the long run for

both the players and the coaches since it is turning into a money game and not about academics

or the coaches. Coaches also are having to learn how to use NIL. “And that’s the thing.
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Recruiters understand NIL is now part of the discussion. Multiple coaches said they use NIL

success by others at their school and even mention the On3 NIL Valuations of their players as

major parts of their recruiting pitch. Yet, there’s a fine line on focusing too much on it, which is

why it can be concerning when recruits gravitate toward NIL instead of other selling points at a

school”. The article is not completely negative and cannot be portrayed that way, since some

universities and coaches are benefitting and getting better players due to their ability to create

NIL deals for their players.

The YouTube video College Coaches Worry NIL Deals Will Corrupt NCAA Sports by

CNBC uses ethos, logos, and pathos as well to explain to their audience about how the new NIL

rule is changing how college recruiting is being handled and how it is going to affect the future

of the NCAA. The video posted by CNBC uses ethos in countless ways to show credibility on

how they know all of this information. For starters, they use clips of different coaches talking

about what they think about how the NIL rule needs to be regulated. The first clip was a video

showing the Big Ten commissioner talking to congress and how there needs to be more rules and

regulations so that the new NIL rule does not get out of hand and be abused by teams that are

way wealthier than other schools. Clips were also shown of the University of Alabama’s head

football coach Nick Sabin and Ole Miss’s head football coach Lane Kiffin talking about how

they view the new rule, with Nick Sabin saying that they do not play into the NIL recruiting

tactic and Lane Kiffin saying that it is making cheating legal, a good number of coaches are up in

arms about how this affects recruiting. The artifact used Logos in it to explain to the audience

about the amount of money these student-athletes are making off of NIL deals. For example, in

the video, they talk about how a third-party group that was fans and a part of the Ohio State
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Buckeyes football team raised $550,000 for just four football players that were going to play for

them. The video even used a quote from On3 about how much money a high school basketball

player named Mikey Williams had made so far from NIL deals, which was $2.7 Million. This

shows the audience that some student-athletes are making a lot of money from this new rule

rather than before with the only way they could get legal money was only in a scholarship form.

The targeted audience for this video is just the everyday average U.S. citizen since this was

shown on live TV, but the video will definitely peak way more interest in avid college sports

fans. The news video uses little pathos, but not much was needed since they are just reporting the

story and not trying to persuade to feel some sort of way towards the NIL rule. An example of

Pathos in the video would be when they talked about how some athletes are using the NIL

money to buy a new expensive car, while others were using it to pay for family members'

medical bills or for housing bills. They tried to show the audience how some college athletes

need money a lot more than others.

The article by On3 “It’s a Red Flag”: Coaches Say Recruits Focusing on NIL

Opportunities Is Worrisome and the YouTube video by CNBC College Coaches Worry NIL

Deals Will Corrupt NCAA Sports try to convey to their audience what the world of college sports

recruiting is now like for recruits and college coaches after the recent change to the student-

athletes ability to make money off of their name, image, and likeness. Both artifacts targeted

audiences were sports fans, but the On3 was more directly targeting those who are in the world

of high school and college sports while the CNBC video was targeted more towards normal

citizens since it was on live news television. Both artifacts were heavy in Ethos and Logos, but
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not much Pathos was used in either, which makes sense because both were more informational

rather than argumentative pieces.

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Work Cited

“College Coaches Worry NIL Deals Will Corrupt NCAA Sports.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 July

2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzbHOMe1_LA. Accessed 21 Mar. 2023.

Crabtree, Jeremy. “'It's a Red Flag:' Coaches Say Recruits Focusing on Nil Opportunities Is

Worrisome.” On3, 10 Mar. 2023, https://www.on3.com/nil/news/its-a-red-flag-coaches-

say-recruits-focusing-on-nil-opportunities-is-worrisome/.