NIL, Loyalty, Integrity and the Silver Lining of Change

“I’m very proud of this gold pocket watch. It was my grandfather’s watch; he sold it to me on his deathbed.”

That’s an old Woody Allen joke… It’s funny because it flips legacy into a transaction. And, it’s not far from what seems to be happening right now in college athletics. 

While it's encouraging that athletes are finally getting paid for their value, many wrestlers, fans, and coaches are left with an unpleasant and unexpected aftertaste. 

If you feel what I feel, you have the sense that something with inherent value, something we’ve respected and honored for so long, can now be bought. NCAA Qualifiers, All-Americans, and NCAA Champions are created out of the rare raw materials of dedication, intensity, skill, creativity, individual style, blood, sweat, and tears. The truly good news is that it still takes the same inputs to become a great wrestler. The difference is that these amassed bodies of work have now become almost completely transferable. They can be packaged up and bought by the biggest NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deal. 

NCAA trophies that used to be made up of a rare alloy mix of team cohesion, loyalty and warrior culture can now be made up of a bunch of elite individuals glued together by a new adhesive—NIL incentives. 

The number of Division 1 wrestlers who have entered the transfer portal since the 2025 NCAA Championships in Philadelphia is staggering. Even more shocking is the caliber of talent on the move. Former NCAA finalist Rocco Welsh, former NCAA champions AJ Ferrari and Richard Figueroa, and several returning All-Americans have all entered the portal. You could take just these eight guys, put them on one team, and quite possibly have yourself a trophy at next year’s NCAA Championships. The NCAA calls this the “transfer portal”. We would be more accurate in calling it the transfer market. 

Is NIL Commodifying Collegiate Success and Undermining Its Integrity?

From a less comedic and more economic perspective, what’s happening in college wrestling can be described as commodification—the process of turning something that was once valued for its inherent and sacred qualities into a standardized product for sale.

In recent years, wrestling has proven that if you want an NCAA champion on your team, you can buy one. Right now, the going rate in the transfer market for a national title contender seems to fall somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000+.

In Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein explains how money-driven commodification has eroded the previously incalculable and personal nature of things like relationships, child care, intimacy, and experiences, reducing them to mere transactions. Is the same phenomenon unfolding in college wrestling?

Has NIL Changed Wrestlers' Integrity and Loyalty?

Some notable wrestlers and coaches have voiced their frustration over what they see as a shift in values. Olympic Champion Jordan Burroughs recently joked on social media that he’s entering the transfer portal and considering Jamaica and Mexico as his top options. His sarcasm reflects a broader unease within the wrestling community.

Before we jump to our high-horse conclusion that wrestlers and coaches used to be far more loyal or morally sound, consider this. 

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously critiqued our concepts of integrity and morality. He pointed out that what we often call morality is just adherence to customs and obedience to rules, rather than genuine morality or virtue. Applying this thought, perhaps wrestlers prior to the NIL era did not have more integrity or loyalty, they were just obeying the rules that were in place at the time. 

Would Jordan Burroughs, Dan Gable or Cael Sanderson have transferred for a million dollars if given the chance?

I have to imagine they would have if it were within the rules at the time they were in college. 

Would you be loyal to the speed limit if the government removed penalties for speeding?

Maybe loyalty and integrity haven’t disappeared from wrestling. It’s just that new incentives have arrived.

Is this the Professional Wrestling League We’ve All Been Asking For?

Real Pro Wrestling was a professional sports league of wrestling, similar to the amateur style of wrestling found at the college and high school level, and in the Olympic Games.

Sometimes you have to give up what you have in order to get what you’ve always wanted.

Speaking for the wrestling community, we’ve always wanted a professional wrestling league. We’ve hoped for our own NBA or NFL equivalent. Real Pro Wrestling was a league that tried valiantly but never quite got off the ground.

Now here we are—our very own professional wrestling league, complete with million-dollar contracts, revenue sharing, and plenty of off-season trades. We’ve always wanted it and here we are standing at the edge, afraid to embrace the leap forward. Maybe the impacts of NIL have just been another necessary growing pain for our sport. If we can embrace the shifting ground beneath our feet, will this uncomfortable change be the evolutionary step we’ve long been waiting for? 

— Joe Nord