College football has always been a wild and chaotic entity the NCAA has struggled to control. The addition of NIL has attempted to regulate the madness, but it still exists at full throttle. Disparity in wealth remains a growing problem for the sport, one that UCF football head coach Gus Malzahn believes must be directly addressed.

“We need some kind of salary cap or some kind of guidelines,” he said, per On3.com's Eric Prisbell. “It’s all over the place. I think every coach in America would second that.”

Malzahn and his Knights are marching right into the NIL storm now that they are official members of the Big 12. They have quickly learned that certain programs like them are at a big disadvantage when it comes to NIL laws. States like Texas, Oklahoma and others that house UCF's new conference foes face less restrictions and thereby have much more leeway.

Expansion additions like Cincinnati, BYU and UCF football are limited, while those aforementioned schools can work around loopholes that contradict the NCAA's own guidelines. This sticky conflict is only exacerbated by the recently modified transfer rules that allow a player to switch teams without penalty if they had not entered the portal before.

“You’d like just uniformity a little bit probably from a holistic standpoint,” Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell said, per On3.com. “It’s such a tough question and such a unique time. When NIL and one-time transfer hit at the same time, it changed the landscape of college football. I think uniformity would be good for both of those areas.”

Whether or not some sort of salary cap needs to be implemented like Malzahn suggested, the NCAA must figure how to properly organize NIL. Otherwise, the same inequities and unfair practices that have threatened to tarnish college football in the past will just remain in the present.

Fans will still watch and obscene revenue will keep pouring in, but how long can the sport hide behind this facade.