Some dates just mean more.
In the world of collegiate athletics, July 1, 2021, is one of them — when the NCAA Board of Directors' approval for college athletes to receive financial compensation and profit off their name, image and likeness became official.
Pandora's box was opened.
"The most dramatic change in college athletics in decades," Michigan Regent Jordan Acker called it in a recent conversation with the Free Press. "Well, really ever."
Widely seen as a long overdue endeavor for thousands of athletes to get rightful compensation through their marketability, NIL often can be as wholesome as its original intention; to force the NCAA, a self-proclaimed non-profit with billions of dollars in its eco-system, to allow the young adults who grew it into a multi-billion dollar enterprise to make money, too.