As someone who spends as much time working cattle as following college football, I’ve been keeping a close eye on how the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) era is unfolding. What I’m seeing isn’t just a shift in policy, it’s a full-blown transformation of college sports into something eerily familiar to those of us in the livestock business. College athletes are starting to look less like students and more like market-driven assets—evaluated, bought and sold in ways that echo how we manage production livestock.
Let’s be clear from the start: athletes should be compensated. For too long, universities, TV networks and sponsors raked in billions off the backs of unpaid labor. The NIL era was a necessary and overdue correction. But that correction has taken on a life of its own, and now we’re operating in a system that looks more like a bull sale than a recruiting class.
In production livestock, we know the game. Bulls and females are judged not just on phenotype but on data: birth weights, weaning weights, yearling performance, carcass quality, maternal traits, docility scores—you name it. The top animals don’t just look the part—they back it up with EPDs, genomics and track records. Those with the right combination of performance and predictability command premiums, get sold into influential herds and make a real impact. But here’s the kicker: value is based on utility, not flash.
That’s where the NIL world is starting to worry me. Many of today’s top recruits are being valued less for their longevity and more for their market appeal. They’re being sized up by donor collectives and corporate sponsors based on how well they fit into a brand narrative, not unlike how a seedstock bull is evaluated for how he fits a marketing strategy. The difference? In livestock, that strategy is rooted in long-term production goals. In college sports, it’s often about short-term hype.
Take a promising athlete out of high school. If he’s got talent and a large social media following, he’s going to bring a premium—just like a bull with strong carcass data and a famous sire. But what happens when he underperforms? Gets injured? Misses expectations? Just like a bull that doesn’t breed cows or calves with poor vigor, he’ll find himself quickly replaced. That’s the cold reality of a performance-based industry, whether you’re talking cattle or college football.
In the cattle world, we’ve learned not to chase trends for the sake of attention. A bull with fancy numbers but poor structure won’t last long in real production settings. Calves that don’t grow, cows that don’t breed back and cattle that don’t hold up in the pasture or feedlot will put a ranch out of business in a hurry. That’s why we focus on balance—maternal ability, fertility, longevity and real-world efficiency. We cull hard. We keep the ones that work. College athletics could use more of that mindset.
Instead of building programs on NIL dollars alone, we should be investing in the long-term development of athletes—mentorship, education, physical and mental wellbeing. Don’t just look at their highlight reels. Look at their work ethic, their character and their ability to contribute to a team over time. In livestock terms, don’t just buy the top-selling bull in the catalog, make sure he’ll do the job in your environment.
NIL has opened the door for opportunity, and that’s a good thing. Just like cattle producers benefit when their genetics perform well and earn premiums, athletes should benefit from their success and influence. But without structure—without accountability, transparency and long-term thinking—we risk turning student-athletes into disposable assets, used up and cast aside when they no longer deliver.
In both industries, the most valuable individuals are the ones who stand the test of time. In the cattle world, it’s the cow that raises a strong calf year after year, or the bull whose sons’ top sales because they’re sound, fertile and consistent. In college sports, it should be the athlete who grows as a player and a person, contributes on and off the field, and leaves the program better than they found it.
We need to stop treating athletes like walking advertisements and start treating them like people with potential worth developing. Branding is fine—important, even—but if all we care about is market value, we’ll lose the very essence of college athletics.
Because whether you’re building a herd or a team, the goal should be the same: develop something that lasts. — JARED PATTERSON
