Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin made a suggestion this week at SEC Media days for college football that sounds good on the surface, but it would actually be impossible to implement.

Kiffin suggested that college football/NCAA impose a "salary cap" in order to cut back on some of the chaos that's consuming the sport in the wake of NIL (name, image, and likeness) legalization.

Kiffin suggests that there should be a salary cap of sorts on NIL that would be managed by coaches to ensure competitive balance in college football. He’s not a fan of the current model.

“This was not thought out at all and created a massive set of issues.”

— Laine Higgins (@lainehiggins17) July 18, 2022

Alabama head coach Nick Saban also alluded to a salary cap in college football being a good idea.

Saban: "There is no competitive sport anywhere that doesn't have guidelines on how they maintain some kind of competitive balance. I think that's important to college athletics."

He cites reverse draft order, tougher scheduling and salary caps in the NFL as examples

— Laine Higgins (@lainehiggins17) July 19, 2022

The thought behind a salary cap is that it would help create competitive balance like it does in the NFL. Each program would only have a set amount of cash to spend on players, meaning that talent would be spread out among major college football programs.

Sounds like a great way to cut down on over-zealous NIL spending and create some parity, right?

There's just one problem — programs don't pay players. At least not technically speaking.

NIL deals might be used to sway a player to a particular school, but that's not the main purpose of NIL deals.

College athletes still aren't being paid to play football. College athletes are just allowed to receive endorsement deals like professional players. If you replace the word NIL with endorsement in these conversations, it's easier to separate NIL deals from "pay for play".

There's no way to put a cap on what a player can earn through endorsements. If USC quarterback Caleb Williams wants to endorse a pizza place in Brooklyn for whatever reason, he's free to do that. And that pizza place can work out whatever kind of deal with Williams that they want.

With NIL being legal, there's nothing the NCAA can do to stop Williams or any other player from earning money from endorsements. Those endorsements technically have nothing to do with the school.

There's just no way to put a cap on NIL earnings, though I think eventually this will all self-correct. Boosters are eventually going to trend toward paying players to stay on the roster instead of paying recruits (outside of maybe elite five-star players) that haven't proven if they're going to be worth the money. Programs that don't have an endless supply of booster cash on hand are simply going to have to wait for that self-correction to happen.

I don't have any problem with the spirit of Kiffin's idea — I think some sort of regulation would be a good thing. But when it comes to NIL deals, you can forget about a salary cap. It's never going to happen. If the NCAA even thinks about a NIL salary cap, an antitrust lawsuit will be on the way.

Featured image via Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports