The 2025 NFL Draft is next week, and the front-runner for the No. 1 overall pick, University of Miami quarterback Cam Ward, is an anomaly. In any other year, the top prospect being a journeyman who attended three schools in five years and ended his career by losing the Pop Tarts Bowl would be nearly impossible. But now it may be the new reality of the college-to-pro transition. The impact of the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness (NIL) legislation means the traditional “stay or go pro” dilemma is no longer binary. There’s now a third path: Transfer strategically, build your brand, enhance your draft value, and collect NIL checks along the way—all while staying in college. The age of player mobility and monetization For decades, college athletes were not allowed to make money in any way, shape, or form related to their sport or likeness without sacrificing their amateur status. That changed in 2021, when NIL legislation empowered athletes to sign endorsement deals, monetize their social media, and collect appearance fees, ending the era in which players could lose eligibility for something as simple as eating too much pasta at a team banquet. Now, players in marquee positions at top schools can average between $75,000 and $800,000 in NIL dollars annually. In 2024, University of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders led all college football with $6.2 million in NIL deals—something that likely factored into his decision to forgo last year’s NFL draft and return to Colorado for his senior season. Meanwhile, the transfer portal now allows players to transfer freely between schools without having to sit out a year, as was previously required (think free agency, but for college). Under these new rules, FBS scholarship transfers rose from 1,946 in 2021-22 to 2,303 in 2022-23, reaching 2,707 in 2023-24, according to NBC Sports. In 2023-24 alone, the total number of NCAA football players across all divisions who entered the portal exceeded 11,000. Already this year, more than 400 players have entered the spring portal since it opened on Wednesday, meaning more players are using it every year to take control of their college careers and future NFL prospects. Case study No. 1: Cam Ward Ward and Sanders, this year’s top two quarterback prospects, took different routes to the draft, yet are each a product of the new landscape. Ward finished high school as an unknown zero-star prospect who went to the only school that wanted him: the University of the Incarnate Word, an FCS program in Texas. Two years and 71 touchdowns later, having made a name for himself, Ward transferred to Washington State, further elevating his national profile over two seasons before declaring for the 2024 NFL Draft. The problem was that some experts didn’t even consider him a top-100 prospect at the time. So with the opportunity to improve his draft stock—and the promise of NIL dollars—he chose to return to school, transferring for a second time in three years, this time to Miami. As a Hurricane, Ward was a Heisman Trophy finalist and won the Davey O’Brien Award, given to the nation’s top quarterback. He also landed $2 million in NIL deals along the way while positioning himself as the potential No. 1 overall pick, where he is likely to match or exceed the $39.5 million fully guaranteed contract last year’s No. 1 pick, University of Southern California quarterback Caleb Williams, signed with the Chicago Bears. According to one NFL evaluator, had Ward stayed at Incarnate Word, as he would have in a pre-transfer portal world, he would likely be a fifth-round pick at best. Case Study No. 2: Shedeur Sanders Projected to go as high as eighth overall in the 2024 draft, Sanders, who transferred to Colorado from Jackson State before his junior year, passed on the NFL and returned to college, where he earned $6.5 million in NIL deals. The Atlanta Falcons selected Michael Penix Jr. eighth overall in that draft. Had Sanders been that pick, we can assume he would have received something akin to Penix Jr.’s four-year, fully guaranteed rookie contract worth $22.88 million with a $13.46 million signing bonus. This year, Sanders has been projected to go as high as No. 3 to the New York Giants, with whom he held a private workout this week. Should that happen, he could expect to receive at least what University of North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye received at the No. 3 slot last year—a fully guaranteed four-year, $36.63 million deal with the New England Patriots (with a $23.46 million signing bonus). If that’s how Sanders’s chips fall on Thursday, his net gain will be roughly $13.75 million in NFL contract dollars, plus the $6.5 million in NIL money, meaning he will effectively have netted more than $20 million just for staying in school. But Sanders’s gamble carries risk. Recent mock drafts show Sanders sliding, with some analysts predicting he could fall outside the top 10. If that happens, his decision to skip last year’s draft might prove a financial miscalculation, even with his NIL earnings. This is the calculus today’s college stars face—immediate pro security versus betting on themselves while earning NIL money. It’s a high-stakes game with career-defining consequences. Risky for players, good for the NFL NFL draft analysts project only 55 to 65 underclassmen in the 2025 draft, down from the typical 90 to 110 in previous years. The minimum base salary for NFL rookies for 2025 is $840,000, typical for late-round picks. Many of these players can, according to some NFL executives, likely achieve that in NIL dollars if they return to school. So, more mid-to-late-round picks are betting on themselves and staying in school to improve their stock while earning NIL money. This shift transforms the later rounds of the draft. Instead of raw underclassmen taking early swings based on potential, teams now find more experienced players who have exhausted their eligibility. NFL teams are embracing this new reality. The NIL and transfer portal era delivers more polished prospects with real-world business experience from managing personal brands and finances. The transfer portal creates natural experiments demonstrating adaptability across different systems and competition levels. Though scouting becomes more complex with prospects bouncing between programs, teams gain invaluable insights into character development, seeing how players handle wealth and fame before investing millions in draft capital. Beyond the NFL While NIL reshapes football’s talent pipeline, its impact on basketball—particularly women’s basketball—reveals how different sport economies create vastly different career decisions. Consider Olivia Miles, who was projected as the No. 2 prospect in the 2025 WNBA draft. Instead of going pro, Miles entered the transfer portal to play one final college season, leaving Notre Dame for Texas Christian University, and taking her lucrative NIL deals with her. If Miles were selected with the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, she would have signed a four-year, $348,198 deal, an average annual value of $87,050. While her NIL valuation is undisclosed, the current top earner in women’s college basketball (Louisiana State University’s Flau’jae Johnson) has $1.5 million in NIL deals, far exceeding what Miles would make in the WNBA in 2025. Delaying her WNBA entry also helps Miles avoid a four-year fixed rookie contract while the league negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement. With the WNBA’s $2.2 billion media deal taking effect in 2026, players are seeking significant pay increases, and Miles is betting that rookies entering next year will receive substantially better compensation than those locked into legacy rookie contracts. Even USC’s JuJu Watkins, perhaps women’s basketball’s most talented player, has no financial reason to rush her ACL recovery and enter the WNBA draft early. Her NIL deals continue during rehab, providing security that previous generations of athletes never had. Cooper Flagg is a special case The case of Duke’s Cooper Flagg illustrates the stark contrast between men’s and women’s basketball. Flagg, just 18, is expected to be the No. 1 NBA draft pick after just one college season and could earn roughly $13.8 million as a rookie, escalating to $19.2 million by year four. After his rookie contract, he would be eligible for a five-year max extension worth an estimated $328.3 million, and if he makes an All-NBA Team along the way, that max extension would approach $400 million. If Flagg returns to Duke, experts estimate he could earn between $6 million and $8 million in NIL money. Given his earning potential in his rookie year and the possibility of delaying starting the clock toward a possible $400 million max extension, returning to school would be financially irrational, making Flagg an exception to what has otherwise become a popular rule among prospects. The future is now As the landscape continues to evolve and amateurism becomes more professionalized, the relationship between college athletics and pro leagues will follow suit. The traditional talent pipeline has been reengineered, and it will be on full display at Thursday’s NFL draft. Ward and Sanders aren’t just prospects. They’re prototypes of a new business model. Players now operate like startups, leveraging strategic pivots (transfers) and funding rounds (NIL deals) to maximize their valuation before acquisition (the draft). Ward’s journey from zero-star recruit to potential first-overall pick represents the ultimate minimum viable product transformation, while Sanders’s $6.5 million NIL portfolio demonstrates the power of calculated patience and brand development. The talent acquisition game in sports has changed forever. The only question remaining is which teams and players are creative enough to use that to their advantage.