Right About Now with Ryan Alford - College Football’s Identity Crisis: NIL, Leadership, and Loyalty with Jay Paterno

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

In this episode of Right About Now, Ryan Alford sits down with Jay Paterno—former Penn State coach, author, and leadership expert—for a candid conversation about the real impact of NIL on college football. From the rise of pay-to-play collectives to leadership failures, mental health pressures, and the erosion of fan loyalty, Jay breaks down what’s actually happening behind the scenes of today’s game. This isn’t a hot take—it’s a firsthand look at how college football is changing, and why many fans feel the sport they love is slipping away. Topics Covered: Why NIL quickly turned into pay-to-play The lack of leadership from the NCAA How money is changing locker room dynamics Mental health pressure on 18-year-old athletes Why fans are losing emotional connection What Joe Paterno would’ve done differently The future of contracts, transparency, and collective bargaining Why winning—not branding—is the real currency Key Takeaway:College football doesn’t have a talent problem—it has a leadership problem. Guest Bio:Jay Paterno is a former Penn State assistant football coach, leadership strategist, author, and nationally recognized voice on the evolution of college athletics. Jay brings a rare inside perspective on leadership, culture-building, and the business of college sports. Beyond coaching, Jay has served as a Penn State University Trustee, giving him firsthand insight into the intersection of athletics, academics, and institutional leadership. He is also a television analyst and host of Nittany Game Week, airing across more than 400 stations in five states. Today, Jay consults with athletic departments, organizations, and leaders navigating NIL, culture, leadership, and change, while continuing to write and speak on the realities facing modern college football. Stay up to date with Jay’s work, insights, and appearances: 🌐 Website: jvpaterno.com 🐦 X / Twitter: @jpaterno 📸 Instagram: @jvpaterno Interested in his book? Buy directly from his website or Amazon  

The landscape of college sports just shifted, and today we're diving into the playbook of one of the industry's most respected voices. Join me, Ryan Alford, as I sit down with Jay Paterno to deconstruct the NIL era, the high-stakes pressure of modern coaching, and the critical mental health hurdles facing today's student athletes. From the insights in his book blitzed to the unfiltered truth about gambling and transparency, this conversation is a master class in leadership for the new frontier of the game. Passes for leadership these days is I say it goes. I call it leadership by title. The president of a university, and if I tell you do this, you got to do this,

or I'm the athletic director, or I'm the head football coach, and if I tell you, you got to do this, you got to do it because I have that title, that does not endure, and that's not successful. And ultimately, the people that you're in charge of, if they don't buy in and you don't have credibility, you can't lead them anywhere. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes.

You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about how you get right in today's business world, how you keep up with everything that's happening. And of course, it's all about now. So, oh, hey, you're going to know this name. We've got a name. It's got us legacy and football.

Football, coaching, leadership at all, is Jay Paterno. What's up, Jay? Not much. How you doing? Hey, man, I'm good. If I get to have somebody out and talk business and football and college sports and all that stuff, it is a good day. We're going to talk with Jay about his perspective on M-I-L, its impact on the game. Talk to me about what you've been up to.

I'm on the board of trustees at Penn State, which has given me a really, really good perspective on the business side, not just of football, but just how to. that fits into the entire universities. I think more coaches should not necessarily become trustees, but vers themselves in the bigger picture. And that's one thing Joe was always great about. He understood the big picture of Penn State. I do a TV show called Nittany Game Week that goes 20 weeks, 1 in 13 stations in five states that covers Penn State football, written three books, do consulting in NIL, a little bit of everything now. I wake up in the morning and say, what do I got to do today? What role do I play? Appreciate what you're doing with keeping lessons and things learned and leadership.

We may talk about it, but it seems like it's in short supply. What passes for leadership these days is I say it goes. I call it leadership by title. The president of a university, and if I tell you do this, you got to do this, or I'm the athletic director, or I'm the head football coach, and if I tell you, you got to do this, you got to do it because I have that title. That does not endure, and that's not successful. And ultimately, the people that you're in charge of,

if they don't buy in and you don't have credibility, you can't lead them anywhere. And that's one thing that comes through, and all the books have written, is that whether it was my dad, writing about my dad or the fictional coach in the two books I wrote. They're novels, but they're based on real stories. They're based on what's really going on in college football. You see that that coach has the same struggles or how do I handle this or how do I communicate. And I was really fortunate.

I forget how many years ago it was now, but there was a group outside of Philly called Tilios Leadership. And that's one of the things they talk about is building cultures, building organizations. And guys, I know they're still in coaching and people I know that are in leadership positions. I still talk to them about some of the things. that I got out of that. And if I was back in coaching, I'd be a much better football coach now than I was then. Some people would say I wasn't much of one then anyway, so it's not a very high bar. But we had a lot of success.

But an understanding of what it takes to lead is no questions in short supply. When you think about leaders and even great coaches, I often wonder like this, I always have this nature versus nurture thing. They just born to be a coach, born to be a leader. Or can it be taught? I know everything can be taught. You've worked with some of the best, your father included. How much of his nature versus I don't learned behavior?

I don't think any leader, I don't think there's any really great leaders that don't learn it. I think you have to have life experiences. There are some people have an innate charisma and innate ability where people will want to be around them. But there's also an element that only takes you so far. Because sooner or later, when things are great and you've got that charisma, people will follow you anywhere. But when things aren't going well, that's when you really find out. And that's when communication really becomes something that you've got to learn. And that's something that, as you said, it's definitely nurtured.

I spent my whole life, no matter who I was around, whether it was in football, whether it was in politics, whether it was business. I'm fortunate. I have a little bit of a Forrest Gump type life where I've been around presidents of the United States. I've been around CEOs of major, major corporations. I've been around even just people that were phenomenal leaders in their communities. But I was smart enough to take notes and always listen to what I could get from them, always trying to steal stuff. I learned with my dad. My dad, as much success as he had in coaching.

as a coach. He was the same way, always making notes, and Nike would take them on these coaching trips every year. He'd be there with all these other coaches, most of whom were much younger than he was. But he would pick their brains, and they didn't even know it. He'd go back to his room and make all these notes. He'd come back and say, well, Bob Stoop says this approach, or this guy is that approach, or Pete Carroll's doing this or say, so he would have all these notes from these guys. I think that's critical if you're going to be a leader anymore. I was a firm believer that the players should be paid. You've got 15-year-old influencers that make money, but somehow college football players are not allowed to do that because their education

gets paid for. It's great. There's that trade-off. A proponent of them being able to benefit from their name-image likeness. I was not a proponent of the Wild Wild West that we've gotten into with seemingly no rules and anything goes. Talk to me, Jay, where we're at, your opinions, your beliefs, etc. The reality is that NIL started because essentially lawsuits started to happen. And then California passed the law basically saying you can't restrict that. So all the lawsuits unfolded and nobody at the NCAA, nobody at the college football level, nobody at the Big Ten, the SEC or anybody took any kind of leadership on this thing.

And we've just been getting jolted by every latest ruling by a judge. So the minute you think the system is set, a judge says, oh, you can't prevent it from doing this and all of a sudden now that changes the rules. Hey, Caitlin Clark at Iowa, State Farm and Nike think there is a return on their investment by using her in a commercial. Or we got a football poster that has my image on it for Penn State and there's corporations on there. I should be getting money for that. That's legitimate NIL.

What we went to very quickly is we invented these things called collectives. And I was one of the guys that founded Penn State's first collective with other people's money because I had four kids in college at times and there was no extra money for me. But the collective suddenly became pay to play. Blitzed where the head coach has explained to me out of its collective works. Well, we pay the players to promote the collective to raise money to pay the players to promote the collective to pay the players is that's money laundering. Now, the collective we started was the idea was nonprofits would take players or athletes

from Penn State and they can't pay them to make appearances, but the collective would pay them to go make an appearance at a food bank or promote events or things like that. So there was a legitimate element to it. But it very quickly became pay to play. And now we've gotten to where because of revenue sharing now, some of that is tapered off. But you are seeing universities now take if they have a deal with Coke or Nike or whatever. they're siphoning off some of that sponsorship money and putting it into its collective and giving it to their players to promote those products.

So it's got to be where it's more legitimate, but there's still room for abuse, no question. Branding and benefiting from your name and image likeness and being paid for that versus just being paid to play the game. That's two very different things. You could be a superstar in the NFL but not necessarily have any brand deals. They're unrelated. Well, I mean, even with some of the things that were going to collectives, and it's a true story, there was one collective that was given every senior on the one football,

$50,000 a year and they were required to do two hours a month tweeting two hours a month that's 48 hours so it's over a thousand dollars it was probably around 1200 something bucks an hour and the players are actually complaining about it if you want to make 1,200 and change an hour you better go to med school or go to law school and you're not going to make that for a while after that or go to the NFL but it's got to a point where it's definitely there's supposed to be a market now of fair market value but again it's going to take a while to get the data to figure out what fair market value is my biggest issue with All of it, Jay, is NFL, you know, everybody's salary. People speculate all, I think you got two mill.

We have no perspective to judge the value. Yeah, exactly. They all claim they're making more than they do. I mean, no question. Exactly. If you get paid to do something, it's professional, you know. We're still in that, like the parents with the sex talk, they don't want to have the talk. They don't want to own up to the fact that it's going on.

We're still in that, well, let's not talk about it. Let's not say they're not really employees. We'll make them 1099 economy type stuff. rather than saying they're employees and what comes with that. Well, benefits come with it and collective bargaining comes with it and all those things that have to come to make it like the NFL. That has to come. I can't tell how many head coaches or ADs or university presidents

or people I've talked to will tell you we certainly we want collective bargaining because it settles the whole market down. But none of want to say that publicly. They think that once you say that, then I get the fact that they're reluctant to do that but somebody's got to come forward and do it. And then you get the transparency that you're talking about and you're getting the upfront stuff as well. as you'll then have the ability to kind of regulate the agents that are involved and give the

players some protection when you have that like the NFLPA does. Yeah. And all this moving around year to year, you got to have some contracts or something. It's just not good. Two things can be true. I can believe you should be paid for your name, image, and likeness. I might even believe you should be paid to get to play. But I can also believe there should be some limitations and some loyalty to the contract. If you're not going to be loyal to the school, then at least be loyal to a contract. It's just not good for college football, I don't think, to have these one-year deals, essentially. That's one of the reasons. Schools want collective bargaining, and at the end of day, it'll protect the players and the schools. Because right now, I can sign a kid to a one-year deal,

and if he's not good enough, I just run them off. Say, hey, we're not signed you and see you later and go to the portal. And nobody talks about all the guys in the portal that don't get picked up. Everybody assumes everybody gets a home and makes lots of money when they go to a portal. That's just not the case. Those contracts, they'll protect the school. Because, again, the school, is investing money in these guys it's coaching training food all that kind of stuff and ideally you want to settle it down so that they can actually progress towards some kind of degree because in a day there's this whole education component nobody talks about anymore it sounds cliche but most of these guys and there's like a commercial they go on to be something besides a pro athlete no at 95% of them or

higher than that even if they make money in college it's not going to be forever that's another lawsuit that's going on right now i forget what school it is that might be vanderbilt or somebody is a basketball player who knows he's not going to go to the NBA and knows what he can make in Europe, but is making more to play at the school. And he's saying, well, how come I'm only limited to five or six years? Because this is a chance for me to make the most money possible of all of my options as a player. You can't kick me out. So I think that lawsuit is coming.

And that'll be an interesting result in that one, because if you can make a million bucks playing college basketball, but you can only make $500 grand in Europe, I'm going to stay in grad school forever and make a million bucks. until they kick me out. It brings up a lot of questions, Jay, because for me, sometimes if you mess with the ingredients too much, your cake no longer tastes good. Part of me goes, oh, that'd be awesome if we could keep some of our favorite guys a couple years longer. But then I'm like, but does it stay the game that it is today?

And I'm not talking about just the nostalgia. I'm talking about there's something about the ingredients of college football and the limited window that all these ingredients work together to bring fandom and interest and desire and all that. that if you mess with that too much, does it mess with it? There's a real danger of that right now. I hear more and more fans. Look, I'm 57 years old.

So I'm old, but I'm not that old. But I hear more and more people my age and younger, 10, 12 years younger, that are saying, you know what? Yeah, I watch. I root from my team, but it's not the game that I love. It's not that. And when push comes to shove, I'm not going to a bowl game if 12 guys are going to opt out. I mean, Penn State's playing Clemson and five of their guys on defense that are really, really good players are opting out. and you say, okay, well, is it really Penn State versus Clemson?

And, you know, Penn State's got guys opting out on their defense and offense. So it's not even a continuation of the season that was. Be careful what you asked for, because when it becomes the CFL, it wasn't very popular. No question. And if we start motioning guys like they do and put 12 guys in field down, I'm definitely quitting. But for Penn State fans, the Penn State Bull against Clemson, it's good because that's a drive. You can drive up and back the same day, go to the game. If this bowl game were in Arizona, I'm not sure many fans who go out there to see.

a bunch of guys. And we've turned the bowl games into just television content more so than an experience. Talk to me about blitzed for our listeners. I know it's like kind of fictitional in some days, but like talk to me about the premise and everything. It's a novel. So it's fiction, but it's what I call nonfiction fiction. So the stories you're going to read in there that are listed as fictional stories, they're real. It's really what's going on. It's just it's easier when you're going to write about something like this that is current, that is controversial. It's a lot better to kind of make it a fiction because now lawyers aren't involved. because if I write this about somebody, now I'm getting sued.

So I took it and made it of what I call nonfiction fiction, so it's a novel. So I can be brutally honest. I just change names and changed schools, and I make it very clear. I'm not trying to sign this to any one school or not. So I've changed names. So really what college football fans will get out of this book is what's really going on. The pressures of being a head coach sitting in there and having to deal with, I have a day, you know, when the season's over, where nine kids come in to meet with you one-on-one

about transferring or not transferring. or finding out from a third party that a kid is going to leave, as well as all the other things that they're dealing with. They're dealing with the NIL part. They're dealing with the business part. They're dealing with these kids when they get in trouble. They're dealing with a kid claims that one of his assistant coaches use a racial slur or that they were harassed and now a report is written and the board of trustees gets involved.

There's all elements of this thing from trustees all the way down to the players in this book. And then it talks about mental health aspect of it, not just on the players, and which is nobody got prepared these players for the mental health part of the NIL world. Nobody. And I've been consulting in NAL for four years, and that's one of the things we talked about from day one is all of a sudden, junior is the breadwinner in the family. And if he leaves from the school that he really loves, it goes somewhere else. There might be more money.

And the family's saying, why aren't you moving? And that's stuff they didn't use stuff to deal with until they were in the NFL. Now, all those things are hitting 18-year-olds and 17-year-olds. And all of that, the mental health part for the coaches, and I don't want to get too much. about what's going on Michigan, certainly there is a situation where the pressure and some of the mental part of it were underestimated, maybe not handled correctly. And you look at the player from Dallas Cowboys who killed himself. I mean, these things are very, very real. No one's talking about and those do come through in the book. It's like, that's the layer that sort of always swept under

the rug. Oh, it's just about money. They just want to do this, all that. Well, yeah, it is that. But like, there is these components that go into the impact that happens. It's deep. There's a point in the book where the head coach is actually goes and starts to talk to someone, not a psychiatrist, but someone who, an outside advisor. Life coach isn't the right word, but a leadership person. And that person actually says the coach, when you go away with your wife to the beach, I want you to put your phone down for two days. Put someone in charge when you leave.

And if there's a major, major emergency, he'll know how to get you, but anything else. And he goes berserk, like, you want me to do what? And that's how these coaches are wired. And when the phone rings at 12.30 at night, it's not the academic advisor telling you congratulate and you're having 15 guys make deans list. It's something very, very different. And that's the pressure you feel in the college game because unlike the pros, when they leave the building and the pros, they're grown men. And when in college, when they leave the building, you're still expected to have some influence on them. Jay, where can everybody learn more about what you're up to, buy the book, all that stuff?

My website is JVPaterno.com. My name, J.A.Y, the letter v.paterno.com. I'm on Twitter or X or whatever it is now at J.Paterno. Instagram at J.V. Paterno. But you can get the book on the website. You can get the book on Amazon or wherever you get books. And I keep up with everything I'm doing. Subscribe on the website or follow me on those social media platforms.

You get a lot to contribute. You're still doing great things. I appreciate you for coming on. I appreciate you having me. Cool. I really appreciate it, Jay. Hey, guys, you know, to find us. Ryan is right.com.

we'll have links to Jay's books, his website, and all the ways to stay up to date to what he's doing, all his contributions to football leadership. We appreciate you, and we'll tune in next time on right about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening. Thank you.