While the world of college athletics is a wild one with some of the recent uses for name, image, and likeness at universities across the country, TNT’s Charles Barkley chose to voice his disdain for Auburn, his former university, and their NIL requests.
“These NCAA idiots and fools, I should just call them jackasses like they are,” Barkley said on Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich. “I’m trying to figure out how we’ve screwed up college sports. I said it one day, I would call it the Wild Wild West, but that would be disrespectful to the Wild Wild West. I have no idea how we ruined college sports, and I understand why Dan (Hurley) is like, ‘I might as well go to the NBA and make a lot of money. Don’t have the headaches of NIL and the transfer portal’, because I have no idea where college sports are going. But it’s going in a bad direction.”
Barkley then called out his former team, the Auburn Tigers, for their constant requests to donate to the NIL Collective.
“My biggest pet peeve and I’ve told them, y’all can’t call me every year asking for millions of dollars, that’s not gonna happen,” Barkley said about Auburn. “Ya’ll need to stop. I love Auburn. I love Auburn. But the chances of me going back to black and broke again because I want Auburn to be good in football and basketball, that’s not gonna happen. I love my school, but I don’t love them that much.”
While NIL seems to be a topic in college athletics that is here to stay, it’s safe to say that with the money required to remain competitive in today’s college landscape, more and more celebrities will likely be following Barkley’s lead when it comes to donating to their former team.
