Scott Fitzkee and Blair Thomas played football a decade apart at Penn State. Fitzkee played his last season for the Nittany Lions in 1978 and Thomas in 1988.

They were two of the better-known players on their teams and would have flourished had the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) avenue been open to them.

“When I played, they had these little Blair Bears they were selling with the No. 32 on it, and I could have made a lot of money off that,” Thomas said, laughing.

Thomas went on to make his share of money by playing for parts of six seasons in the NFL, four with the New York Jets. While knowing he could have taken advantage of it had the NIL been in place in the late 1980s, he expressed feelings of concerns about the NIL and the transfer portal, two new staples of college football, during his visit to the Andre Reed Celebrity Golf Classic at Woodstone Country Club in Danielsville earlier this week.

“It’s a little bit of the wild, wild West right now because no one is really overseeing it,” he said. “There’s no governing body tracking everything. There are so many kids that have agents now, and so many things can get twisted up. I want to see how it all fares, and hopefully it’s a positive. My fingers are crossed.”

Thomas, who wore a baseball hat with the image of Joe Paterno and the No. 409 on it while he played golf, said both the money and the transfer portal can lead kids to believe they’re more valuable than they actually are.

“If the kids don’t play right away in their first year, they assume it’s because of the coaches and not them, and they have to move,” he said. “But what they may find out is that the grass may not be greener on the other side.”

Fitzkee said he’s not a big fan of the transfer portal or the NIL.

“I see it in football, and I see it in sports like women’s lacrosse,” he said. “It’s just going to mess everything up. We were with (Penn State coach James) Franklin the other week, and they were explaining it all to us. If you don’t have this outside money, or these outside people, and someone knows he has a chance to make millions at Tennessee or West Virginia, that’s where they’re going to go. I think it’s horrible.”

Fitzkee said he’s an old-school guy with old-fashioned beliefs.

“It’s bringing these kids in and paying them lots of money, and there’s got to be a lot of negatives with that,” said Fitzkee, who played in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles and in the original USFL with the Philadelphia and Baltimore Stars. “It’s supposed to be a team game, but they’re individuals getting paid. I think it’s very bad. I think it could blow up in a few years. I don’t think it’s good for the university, and I don’t think it’s good for the game. I’m just a fan now, and I don’t understand why these decisions were made.”

Fitzkee said a lot of players are hooking up with car dealerships.

“If there’s a dude driving around in a Maserati, what are the other guys going to think?,” he said. “Then you have a quarterback going to, say, Ohio State and he sees C.J. Stroud is playing well and he’s like, ‘I don’t want to stay here, I want to go to Texas.’ The smartest thing to do is to put the NIL contract together with the transfer portal. If you sign one of those and you transfer, that contract should be voided. The coaches absolutely have to hate it because there’s nothing they can do. They’re going around trying to get people to donate money. To me, it’s a mess and not what college football is supposed to be about.”

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