It wasn’t only a gold Pontiac Trans Am with a painted bird on the hood. It was the automotive that Texas A&M gave to Eric Dickerson in 1979, when he was a prime highschool operating again prospect, within the hope that he would grow to be an Aggie. As a substitute, he drove from his hometown, Sealy, Texas, to Dallas and Southern Methodist College.

On the time, Mr. Dickerson’s automobiles (S.M.U. gave him one, too) have been an emblem of the wretched extra of big-time school sports activities. It was a time when boosters within the Southwest Convention doled out “$100 handshakes” and the S.M.U. trustworthy winked as they talked about how that they had one of the best soccer group cash might purchase.

The S.M.U. Mustangs went 34-11-1 over Mr. Dickerson’s 4 years — the group’s vaunted Pony Specific period. It gave the oilmen and actual property builders and enterprise titans throughout Texas who funneled money to their alma mater bragging rights on the Petroleum Membership of Houston and nation golf equipment in Dallas.

And it drove the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation, which governs school sports activities, nuts. The group had guidelines to cease these sorts of pay-for-play shenanigans and investigators to chase down overeager boosters, who largely eluded their grasp. Mr. Dickerson remembers that one N.C.A.A. investigator visited his dwelling so ceaselessly, the man would sit at his kitchen desk and eat dinner along with his household.

The N.C.A.A. finally caught as much as S.M.U. (Mr. Dickerson was lengthy passed by then, effectively right into a Corridor of Fame profession within the Nationwide Soccer League.) In 1987, the group handed the soccer group the so-called loss of life penalty, the severest punishment it has ever imposed on a Division I faculty for guidelines violations. This system was shut down for 2 seasons, and the college’s fame was tarnished.

Ever since, S.M.U. has wandered the faculty sports activities panorama on the lookout for a house, and a approach to share within the ever-increasing riches related to top-level beginner athletics.

It took almost 4 a long time, $354 million in main building and services upgrades, and a U.S. Supreme Court docket resolution that legalized S.M.U.’s authentic sin — permitting gamers to revenue financially from their athletic talent — however the college has discovered its method again. Final summer season, S.M.U. was invited to join the Atlantic Coast Conference this July.

It wasn’t low cost. S.M.U. was admitted to the A.C.C. solely after agreeing to forgo 9 years of convention broadcast revenues, or $270 million, to keep away from diluting the pot for incumbent members.

For these desirous to hint the evolution of big-time school sports activities over the previous half-century, there could also be no higher instance of the shifting views on the function of cash — and whether or not student-athletes ought to get any — than S.M.U.

The N.C.A.A. has misplaced a lot of its authority now that gamers will be compensated by means of name-image-likeness guidelines, or N.I.L., which successfully enable athletes to be paid by sponsors or donor teams often known as collectives. It’s staring down various lawsuits and challenges to its longstanding beginner mannequin. In a bid to take care of some relevance, the group has known as for a collection of adjustments that may pave the best way for the highest moneymaking faculties to kind a brand new division that may extra intently resemble skilled sports activities.

Within the meantime, universities’ seek for tv cash has modified the map of athletic conferences. The Large Ten, as an illustration, was as soon as concentrated within the Midwest; now it has 18 groups and stretches from Oregon and California to New Jersey. By that measure, increasing the Atlantic Coast Convention into Texas isn’t a lot of a leap.

“What began greater than 150 years in the past with soccer being thought of an extracurricular exercise that benefited student-athletes and provided a glue for a college neighborhood to come back again to campus — ‘Boola Boola’ and all that — has morphed into an incredible trade,” mentioned Oliver Luck, a longtime school sports activities administrator who was a star collegiate quarterback himself and is now a marketing consultant. “And you bought to name it an trade. There’s numerous cash and plenty of curiosity.”

Mr. Dickerson was again on campus just lately, marveling on the solar glowing off the brand new buildings and the six-figure earnings that a few of the present Mustang soccer gamers are incomes. And nowadays soccer is way from the one sport the place athletes share within the spoils of financial success. One S.M.U. volleyball participant, Alex Glover, makes effectively into six figures as a social media influencer.

Checked out a sure method, Mr. Dickerson thought, S.M.U. had been much less a rogue program than one forward of its time. He and his teammates had merely been on the bottom ground of what has grow to be a $17 billion ecosystem of big-time school sports activities. The cash being reaped by present school athletes, he mentioned, was lengthy overdue.

“These jerseys that faculties promote don’t run across the subject by themselves,” he mentioned.

‘Beginner is out the door’

S.M.U.’s new period is personified by Ms. Glover, who merged her two passions — volleyball and social media — right into a facet hustle as a social influencer.

“I wished to take individuals on a deep dive of how a Division I student-athlete operates from day after day,” Ms. Glover mentioned. “There’s much more occurring than displaying up for apply and video games.”

Ms. Glover scripts and shoots witty, fast-paced Instagram movies for a collection known as “Day in the Life of a D-1 Volleyballer.” She takes her followers to the fitness center, to the classroom and on walks together with her canines, in addition to providing vogue and sweetness suggestions. She additionally was a captain on a group that gained an American Athletic Convention championship, and she or he accomplished undergraduate levels in engineering and knowledge science. She is going to full a grasp’s in administration science in Might.

Ms. Glover is just not paid by a collective, however Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Ulta Magnificence are amongst her greater than 40 sponsors.

“For me, past the cash, N.I.L. has given me a way of freedom and pushed me to be taught these completely different abilities so far as content material creation and operating a enterprise” mentioned Ms. Glover, who has written an e-book known as “An Athlete’s Strategy to Scoring NIL Deals.”

For athletes in marquee sports activities like soccer and males’s basketball, nevertheless, the expertise has been extra unsettling. Jake Bailey, a receiver on the soccer group who graduated in December with a level in sports activities administration, wrote a paper on the consequences of N.I.L. on student-athletes. Together with the cash, he wrote, got here extra unfamiliar tasks like managing your funds.

“The lump sums of cash being thrown round is life altering for a lot of gamers and their households,” Mr. Bailey mentioned, including: “Beginner is out the door. We’re execs.”

Six years in the past, when he was popping out of highschool in San Clemente, Calif., there was no cash for schools to dangle past the worth of a scholarship. As a substitute, recruiters pitched their services and teachers and handled him as a famous person on campus visits.

“It was in regards to the glitz and glamour,” Mr. Bailey mentioned.

He selected Rice College in Houston and led the Owls in all-purpose yards — yards gained on runs, receptions and returns — as a sophomore and in receiving as a junior. Mr. Bailey believed he was prepared for an even bigger stage and entered the switch portal. Now faculties might woo him with the promise of money.

“I by no means introduced cash up,” Mr. Bailey mentioned, “however the coaches would inform you the place you match on the dimensions of who was making this and what they have been paying.”

Mr. Bailey selected S.M.U. however mentioned he was not a type of making six figures. He does make sufficient to have arrange a restricted legal responsibility firm to handle his taxes. Within the locker room, he mentioned, his teammates by no means focus on cash. Simply because it did within the Pony Specific period, nevertheless, the car parking zone tells all. Mr. Bailey can see who’re on the prime of the pay scale by the Dodge Chargers and Ford Mustangs they drive.

Final fall, Mr. Bailey was a captain and a number one receiver on a Mustang group that gained the American Athletic Convention championship. With a season of eligibility left, he’ll pursue a graduate diploma and play for S.M.U. within the A.C.C. this 12 months.

Mr. Bailey additionally bought a elevate.

‘Again the place we belong’

Gerald Turner, 78, is a local Texan with a honeysuckle drawl who affords cleareyed opinions delivered in full paragraphs. (He asks reporters to tape him to maintain up.) By the character of his place as S.M.U.’s president, they often finish with an ask. He understands what’s necessary to Texans. He skinned-and-grinned with political heavyweights, enterprise titans and federal officers for a decade to land the George W. Bush Presidential Center on campus.

He got here to S.M.U. in 1995 with a mandate to make the college a nationwide vacation spot for teachers and rebuild a fame badly scarred by the soccer scandal. He has raised almost $3 billion for 44 improvement initiatives, amongst them engineering and schooling buildings, 5 residential halls and a $140 million renovation and enlargement of the extremely regarded Cox College of Enterprise.

S.M.U.’s skilled faculties climbed in rankings, undergraduate acceptance charges shrank as incoming freshmen’s take a look at scores rose, and the college attracted extra college students from out of state.

Final summer season, Dr. Turner known as members of the board of trustees and donors to his convention room within the Perkins Administration Constructing to inform them that S.M.U. lastly had the items in place to land a seat on the adults’ desk of school athletics.

Dr. Turner understood the maintain that athletics, significantly soccer, might have on a college. He was beforehand the chancellor on the College of Mississippi and an administrator on the College of Oklahoma. Shortly after arriving on campus, Dr. Turner set about rehabbing S.M.U.’s athletic services. In 2000, the 32,000-seat Gerald J. Ford Stadium opened on campus with a refined design and an emphasis on neighborhood.

The soccer stadium was sunk into the southern fringe of the campus close to the Boulevard, a grassy, tree-lined parkway that welcomes guests to the guts of campus. The Boulevard can be S.M.U.’s reply to the Grove at Ole Miss, an upscale tailgate area the place anybody who was anybody needed to be seen and that everybody might take pleasure in.

“In case you’re not having successful seasons, there’s bought to be one thing greater than soccer to get followers there,” Dr. Turner mentioned.

The Boulevard was an instantaneous hit. The reinvigorated soccer program not a lot. S.M.U. didn’t return to a bowl recreation till 2009, and, since returning to the sphere in 1989, the Mustangs have managed simply 10 successful seasons as they moved by means of three midtier conferences.

Nonetheless, over the previous decade, the college renovated its basketball area and constructed a subject home, an aquatics middle and a soccer stadium. All have been enhancements needed to draw the eye of a Energy 5 convention.

The A.C.C. made essentially the most sense. Past athletics, the convention provided a possibility to face academically alongside powerhouse state universities like Virginia and North Carolina in addition to smaller, elite personal faculties reminiscent of Duke and Wake Forest.

Nonetheless, it was going to be a heavy raise, and Dr. Turner made positive his board members knew S.M.U. must give the A.C.C. a proposal it couldn’t refuse.

“Right here’s what we wish to provide, however, you realize, I can’t do it until you guys inform me to,” Dr. Turner recalled telling the board. “We’ll inform them that we’ll quit roughly the $30 million it could get from ESPN for including us for as much as 9 years. They might use it for an incentive pool or no matter they wished.”

Then got here the ask. Dr. Turner believed the individuals within the boardroom in addition to different deep-pocketed alums would make up the distinction to assist the college’s athletic division add teaching and help employees and improve salaries that may assist each Mustang program compete on the prime degree of Division I.

“It’s going to price every of you most likely one million a 12 months for the primary 5 years,” Dr. Turner mentioned.

In September, seven days after the A.C.C. formally invited S.M.U. to grow to be a member, the college raised greater than $100 million from 30 key donors and trustees.

“It is a core group who lived by means of the resentment and harm emotions of the loss of life penalty and understood this was a therapeutic second,” Dr. Turner mentioned. “It places us again the place we belong.”

Nonetheless, S.M.U. paid a steep worth for an unsure future. One mainstay of the A.C.C., Florida State, desires out of the convention badly sufficient that it just lately sued the league and claimed that it mismanaged its members’ media rights and imposed “draconian” exit charges of $572 million for the Seminoles to go away.

On the Hilltop, because the S.M.U. campus is thought, there are not any regrets. The soccer stadium’s $100 million Garry Weber Finish Zone Complicated is loud and dusty, however its locker rooms, weight room, assembly rooms, and full kitchen and coaching desk might be prepared for S.M.U.’s 484 student-athletes come August.

“We perceive that the bottom continues to be shifting, and nobody actually is aware of the place that is going to finish up,” David B. Miller, the chairman of S.M.U.’s board, mentioned. “However it’s nonetheless higher to be inside that course of as an alternative of on the surface trying in.”

A recreation of liar’s poker

Whereas gaining entrance to the A.C.C. was a negotiation between well-endowed universities and large donors, the courageous new world of title, picture and likeness is murky at greatest. How else to clarify the N.I.L. valuation of $3.2 million for Arch Manning, a backup quarterback on the College of Texas, 3 times final 12 months’s wage for San Francisco’s Tremendous Bowl quarterback, Brock Purdy?

Nobody in school athletics disputes that the present economic system of unregulated title, picture and likeness is basically play-for-pay. Alongside the switch portal, which permits student-athletes to buy their abilities for a possible beginning place and more cash, the best-funded establishments land one of the best athletes on the highest costs.

Chris Schoemann, government director of S.M.U.’s Boulevard Collective, which doles out the college’s athlete funds, likens the present market to a recreation of liar’s poker.

“Everybody desires to look greater than they’re,” he mentioned.

To that finish, Mr. Schoemann is imprecise on numbers, permitting {that a} wholesome collective — which he says S.M.U.’s is — requires $5 million to $8 million yearly for the soccer and males’s and ladies’s basketball groups. There are benchmarks that gamers and their representatives both already know or Mr. Schoemann will inform them in the event that they inquire. A prime quarterback in a Energy 5 convention, for instance, averages about $550,000 a 12 months.

What number of Mustang soccer gamers earn greater than six figures?

“Greater than a handful,” he mentioned.

For now, what drive {the marketplace} are expertise and the monetary wherewithal to take huge dangers for even greater rewards. Rick Hart, S.M.U.’s athletic director, mentioned it was tough to isolate what it actually price to function a aggressive athletic program as a result of N.I.L., the switch portal and convention affiliation have been all intertwined.

“All these issues play collectively to create this free-agency atmosphere that we’re in, which is challenged even additional by the truth that there aren’t actually any guidelines,” Mr. Hart mentioned. “How a lot cash do we want? Quite a bit.”

‘They made us outlaws’

Mr. Dickerson was again on campus along with his former S.M.U. teammate Harvey Armstrong. Each stay harm over the blame their group shouldered for many years after this system was shut down.

“We felt deserted,” Mr. Armstrong mentioned. “They not solely didn’t invite us again for homecoming, they made us outlaws. I couldn’t even get an interview for a training job that was open.”

Mr. Armstrong’s awkward gait is a reminder of the 15 surgical procedures he has had on his knees and again. He forgets issues, will get aggravated simply and wonders if he’s displaying early indicators of continual traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), the degenerative mind illness that has been discovered in additional than 100 former N.F.L gamers after their deaths.

Mr. Dickerson has had regenerative stem cell remedy for almost a decade for a nasty again that usually immobilizes him. Neither man regrets the toll that the sport he cherished took on his physique. Each do remorse the toll it took on their souls.

“We have been indentured servants,” Mr. Dickerson mentioned. “I name paying these children out within the open doing the proper factor. Lastly.”