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Five with Fry
Think of this podcast as your go-to for tackling the hard stuff with clarity and confidence. On Five with Fry, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the rules, challenges the norms, and dives deep into the tough conversations that shape our lives—conflict, culture, family, sports, tech, and everything in between. This is where you learn to rely on yourself, embrace the messy, and come out stronger on the other side.
Five with Fry
33: Show Me the Money, Show Me the Pressure
College sports have entered a whole new era. With NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deals and the recent House settlement allowing schools to pay athletes up to $22.5 million, freshman athletes are walking onto campus with multimillion-dollar expectations on their shoulders. But what does it mean to be 18, adjusting to college life for the first time, while also carrying the weight of donors, corporate sponsors, and coaches whose jobs may hinge on your performance?
In this episode of Five with Fry, I dig into the hidden costs of this shift. Freshmen used to get a grace period—a chance to adapt to new classes, teammates, and independence. Now, that buffer is disappearing. The result? Rising mental health concerns as student-athletes navigate not only academics and athletics but also the pressure to “earn” their worth.
I’m asking the hard questions: How do we balance fair compensation with protecting young athletes’ well-being? What does progress look like when it comes at the expense of development? And how do we make sure the drive for profit doesn’t come at too steep a human cost?
Subscribe to Five with Fry wherever you get your podcasts, and join the conversation with me on social @JenFryTalks.
Friends, welcome to Five with Fry, where five is the magic number, whether it's five minutes, five questions or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend, from navigating sports conflict to family dynamics, travel, tech, hard-hitting issues and even politics. Nothing and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host. Dr Jen Fry of Jen Fry Talks. Let's get into it, friends. Welcome to Five with Fry. This is your hostess with the mostest Dr Jen Fry. Let's talk about NIL. So, if you don't know, nil is name, image and likeness, and name, image and likeness came, I believe, in 2021, where, essentially, athletes can get paid for their name, jen Fry, their image a picture of me or likeness, a picture of my afro and so name, image and likeness came out, and on the heels of that, this year, we have the house settlement which effectively says you can pay up to $22.5 million to athletes to play, and so those two things don't bother me. I'm not here to discuss if athletes should get paid or not that's above my pay grade but I do want to talk about my concerns. So my first concern is that when you come in as a freshman, you are given a certain level of grace. You're given grace that you are moving from near or far. You're away from your family, your friends. You have new culture If you go north to south, east to west. New food, new food, new way of driving especially if you're going to Boston, good luck. New offense, new defense, new way of being coached, new academics, new place. You're living new person. You're living with all of that. And so there's there's some grace given to first years of they're just figuring themselves out and so they might ride the bench, they might be doing well, but they're giving grace. And now, with the amount of money with name, image and likeness and house settlement, is that the grace is gone?
Dr. Jen Fry:Some of these athletes are coming in with massive NIL contracts and a whole lot of house settlement money, and when you add that much money into it, there's an expectation that you are going to do your job fast and well, that people will be getting their money back in some way from what you're doing. And so what is that going to look like for these 17, 18-year-olds coming in? The whole lot of money and no grace and a whole lot of changes, and so I worry about what's that going to do to these athletes, to their mental health. Is it going to cause more anxiety, more depression? What's that going to look like? Because on top of all the just normal transitional worries they have now, they're going to have the worries of donor collectives wanting some type of return and they're not getting a championship and they're not playing well, that coaches are putting a whole lot of money in them and in some ways putting their career on them and it's not panning out. Companies are putting these big contracts on them and now they're starting to feel the stress from these contracts that it can be taken away if they don't do their job. And so I'm just concerned about the effects on the athletes of having a whole lot of money, a whole lot of expectations and a lot less grace than what was afforded to them when they were younger or to the athletes that came before them, that came before them. And so I wonder how do we juggle both things that we're giving grace to these young people coming in and there's an understanding that they are getting more money than some people ever see in their life and that there's an expectation that they will essentially now do their job.
Dr. Jen Fry:Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry your dose of five insights, ideas and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played subscribe, share and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We love to hear from you. You can come follow me on IG, twitter, the TikTok at Jen Fry Talks, or join me on LinkedIn. Look for me at Dr Jen Fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.