NEW YORK – In a groundbreaking admission, officials overseeing collegiate athletics have expressed profound bewilderment at the discovery that Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals are being used to attract top talent, rather than, as originally envisioned, to allow student-athletes to endorse local car washes for pocket change.

“We thought NIL was about empowering students to monetize their personal brand, perhaps by selling signed photos or appearing at charity events,” stated Dr. Evelyn Thorne, CEO of the Collegiate Athletics Integrity Board, in a press conference. “We never anticipated that schools would leverage these opportunities to, you know, just pay players to come play for them. It’s almost as if the entire system is being used to compensate labor.”

Dr. Thorne elaborated on the “alarming trend” of “manufactured” NIL deals, which appear to be structured less around genuine market value and more around the competitive needs of high-profile athletic programs. “It’s a real shame,” she added, “because we were so close to maintaining the pure, unadulterated amateurism of a multi-billion dollar industry built on the backs of unpaid labor.”

Sources close to the CAIB confirm that the board is now considering a radical new approach to ensure fairness: simply going back to not paying the athletes at all. “It was so much simpler then,” lamented one anonymous official, “when we could just pretend everyone was there for the love of the game, and the free education, which, let’s be honest, most of them weren’t really there for either.”