By Dr. Billy Hawkins
Since the NCAA’s inception in 1906, college sports have undergone several waves of commercialization under its governance. It has experienced less governmental intervention since its inception. There is now presidential intervention seeking to save college athletics, a plea for congressional oversight, the creation of a College Sport Commission, and the proposed SCORE Act to contain this phase of commercialization, which Senator Tommy Tuberville and others have referred to as the Wild West. Furthermore, the return of professional athletes to college creates unique dynamics that exacerbate this phase of chaos.
At the same time, we are witnessing major growth in college athletics, and the seasons of two events in college athletics with the largest global brand and identity, and global viewership: The 2026 College Football Playoffs, viewed in over 150 countries, and the 2025 NCAA Men’s Final Four Men’s Championship game was distributed to 179 countries. The NCAA Women’s College World Series recorded its largest viewership in history, which peaked at 2.8 million viewers. Finally, NCAA Women’s college basketball has experienced its highest viewership in history, reaching 10.8 million viewers during the 2025 championship and an amazing 18.9 million viewers during the 2024 championship game between South Carolina and Iowa.
Yet chaos is amidst as a result of the trifecta of policy changes: Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) legislation, the transfer portal, and revenue sharing. In historical perspective, this chaos can be viewed as another wave of commercialization within the evolution of collegiate sports.
Until now, there have been at least six major waves of commercialization that have altered the landscape of collegiate sport. Wave I involved monetizing spectators through ticket sales and reserved seating. This wave occurred between 1900 and 1930 and involved the expansion of stadiums to accommodate rising demand for seating. The second wave, from 1930 to the 1980s, was the media and broadcasting rights phase and the marriage between shoe corporations and coaches. It could be considered one of the most transformative waves in collegiate athletics. Wave III was the era of corporate sponsorship and brand integration from the 1980s to the 2000s. This wave introduced apparel and shoe contracts for coaches and athletic departments, corporate stadium naming, and sponsorship of football bowl games.
Wave IV, from the 1990s to the 2010s, saw the licensing and merchandising of athletic products. For example, the sale of replica jerseys, where athletes’ names, numbers, and styles were monetized. Also, video games such as EA Sports, which created college football and basketball games. This era also presented conference realignments that launched conference networks, generating multi-billion-dollar media contracts for conferences such as the Big Ten Network and the SEC Network.
Wave V can be characterized as the digital, social media, and data-driven era, which began in 2010 and continues to expand in the early 2020s. It includes monetizing sports media content across cable, streaming, social media, and the global distribution of this content. The final wave, Wave VI, includes the trifecta legislation of NIL, the transfer portal, and revenue sharing. This wave started in 2021 with the passing of NIL laws that allowed college athletes to monetize their name, image, and likeness. The transfer portal provided athletes with “free agency,” while revenue sharing finally recognized them as economic actors and as underpaid athletic laborers within the collegiate industrial complex. The key difference between the first five waves and this current wave is that these waves primarily benefited institutions, their administrators (e.g., coaches), and corporations.
The current wave stands to provide some populations of athletes (e.g., football, basketball, and some athletes in women’s gymnastics and soccer) with a form of economic emancipation that mirrors that of professional athletes. It is a shift in athletes from being commercial objects to becoming commercial agents/actors within the intercollegiate athletic industrial complex.
This current wave has been characterized as the “wild, wild west” or chaotic due to an imbalance in revenue from NIL “Collectives” and the instability caused by the poaching of athletic talent via the transfer portal. It is interesting to note that this wave presents enormous financial opportunities for Black athletes in football and basketball. They have undergirded the intercollegiate athletic industrial complex with their athletic labor. Now they have the opportunity to monetize their name, image, and likeness and share in the revenue they generate. Therefore, similar to the adjustments and adaptations made during the first five waves, I am hopeful that this current wave of chaos will yield some degree of coherence.
I do not seek to limit the number of economic opportunities available to athletes through NIL and revenue sharing. My role as a scholar has been to advocate for economic equity for college athletes, particularly those who undergird the multibillion-dollar collegiate athletic complex, through my research and service. However, among the trifecta of policies during this wave, the transfer portal is a concern for me as a college professor with over 30 years of experience in higher education.
The millionaire status of college athletes created by NIL and revenue sharing will definitely change the educational experience and connection these students will have to the academic culture of the institution, but in the transfer portal’s current configuration, it will have a drastic impact on the ability of college athletes to graduate in 4-5 years with a quality educational experience within a comprehensive degree program.
Unless there is a limit placed on the number of times transferring is allowed or a flexible curriculum, across athletic conferences and academic institutions, more specifically, possibly to allow for the transfer of credits into a viable academic program, college athletes will potentially accrue numerous college credits before graduating, if they graduate at all. College athletic departments will need to work more proactively with academic units to ensure these athletes have a realistic chance to enter an academic program that provides employable skills or academic preparation for graduate school.
In the meantime, as with those who were critical of the first five waves and remain so, each of these five waves has reached some degree of equilibrium or tolerance. We will have to be creative in employing our imagination to envision what the sixth wave could be, despite the turbulence this current wave of commercialization of college athletics has presented. We also need to come to grips with the fact that each wave has pushed the college athlete further away from the educational mission of the academic institution.
Billy Hawkins, Ph.D., is a professor of Health and Human Performance University of Houston