2024 New Year's resolutions for Mississippi State football fans
By Ethan Lee
No. 1: Understand that continued NIL support will help Mississippi State football as much as anything else right now
NIL is a touchy subject for a lot of Mississippi State football fans. It's something many folks didn't want to see exist and it's something that is a bit of a logistics conundrum because of the way it's been implemented by the NCAA.
But it's also something that can help the Mississippi State Bulldogs succeed in every sport. And that's especially true when it comes to football.
The sport and its recruiting efforts have been influenced and impacted by money and the wealthy individuals who own said money for a very long time. It's a major economic driver for a lot of small towns and colleges.
And with the current system in place, NIL is a means to pay players above the table rather than under it. It's admittedly a flawed system that moves money around and it also happens to be crucial to recruiting.
Like it or not, the way things are right now is the way things are.
The NCAA is in a tricky spot because of some judicial fun that is going on right now and it's really not clear what the future looks like for that organization. It's also not totally clear what the future for entities like the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC look like.
And so, efforts to regulate, reform, and redesign the implementation of NIL (or just straight up paying players) are going to be interesting to keep up with.
But even though this current system is a mess, the Bulldogs will need to have continued support in the NIL space if they're going to succeed on Saturday afternoons and evenings in the fall. If the Bulldogs are going to recruit and retain talent at a high level, they're going to need the means to continue to do so.
And right now, that means NIL.
I'm not one to tell people where to allocate their money to (though I'll gladly provide you with a number of nonprofits that I believe do a great job of serving others if you're interested), but I am one to say that if Mississippi State is going to succeed, it's going to be because the Bulldogs have an innovative head coach leading things AND ALSO because the Bulldogs have committed to succeeding in the NIL space.