UNC Football: Mack Brown discusses NIL tampering issues

The UNC football program’s head coach believes that the first two years of NIL were awful, given how programs used tampering to their advantage.

We’re now two years into the world of NIL, and of course, there are plenty of positives and negatives that go along with it.

For college athletes, the ability to benefit from their name, image & likeness is a huge step in the right direction, but certain college programs are taking advantage of these new rules.

While doing an interview on the ACC Network, UNC football head coach Mack Brown voiced his displeasure with the NIL, most notably the tampering that comes along with it. The Tar Heels leader stated that he couldn’t imagine things being much worse than what he and his staff experienced with it over the first two years, given how blatant other programs were along with needing to do whatever possible to retain the players on the current roster.

"“I don’t think it could get any worse. It was awful the first two years. People were just absolutely paying cash to get guys off your team. That’s not what we’re doing. You don’t need to recruit a guy and then have to recruit him twice. I’m having to say in recruiting, ‘Let’s recruit guys that, when they play really good, they’re not going to leave us’. That’s a huge part of this.”"

With the new one-time transfer rule in place, college programs are using the NIL to their advantage to lure some of the top players available to their schools.

In the past, student-athletes were committing to schools with the intent of being there for three to four years.

Now, you simply can’t guarantee that.

Drake Maye is a great example. A star-studded quarterback who projects to be at the top of next year’s NFL Draft class.

It’s no secret that plenty of top-tier programs looking to compete for a national title would do (or give) anything they could to lure Maye from Chapel Hill.

Loyalty will once again need to prevail, as Mack Brown and his staff are focused on recruiting guys that they believe want to be here for the long haul.

Although that’s a great strategy to have, it seems close to impossible given how the current state of college athletics is going.

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