Amounts and importance of NIL according to elite recruits -The Athletic ($)
Interesting article in the Athletic ($) quoting anonymous high-end recruits on what they were offered in NIL and the how important NIL was in their recruitment:
15 recruits were interviewed and amounts offered seemed to range from $50K-$1mil, but a fair portion said no money was ever discussed:
Player 1: $400K a year. It was surprising, for sure, playing defensive back.
Player 2: I never had money tossed my way in any conversations.
Player 3: Somebody tried to throw $1 million at me on signing day. Somebody called my parents and coaches. My loyalty to the program I signed with isn’t worth a million dollars. I’ll make that in no time.
How important NIL was in their decision:
Player 2: It was second or third. I didn’t really know much about NIL, but it played a role. The only thing more important for me was the relationships with the coaches. You have to bond with them.
Player 3: Last. Relationships, player development were No. 1 and No. 2.
Player 4: It was third. To me, relationships and a school that was going to develop me were the first two. Then a scheme that fits me best.
Almost uniformly across the 15 players quoted, they ranked NIL third in importance behind some combination of coaching relationships, player development or education. With many kids saying NIL wasn't discussed in their recruitment and others reporting that pay would be based on performance, maybe NIL was not the boogeyman many of us made it out to be to explain UM's 2023 recruiting class. These are all "elite" recruits and a third of them were offered less than $100K to sign and many signed based on potential earnings at the school.
Lots of other interesting anecdotes in the article on recruiting in general, straight from the horse's mouth:
https://theathletic.com/4044579/2023/01/03/college-football-recruiting-nil-2/
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^
and/or a new offensive and defensive coordinator (after one who notoriously hated recruiting) and a head coach who was packed for the NFL had no impact.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
It seems like Moore, Jaybaugh, Elston, and Clinkscale are pretty good recruiters and have been so for a while. This year Clinkscale, Elston, and Moore were 7,8,9 in the conference, which is pretty good.
Bellamy feels a bit unknown at this point; yes he pulled in English late in this class but otherwise it was kids he coached at West Bloomfield. Last year he was the secondary recruiter on a ton of top-rated guys so maybe it was just a down year. Mike Hart, I gotta say, has really disappointed on the trail though maybe that's not a huge surprise. He signed Cabana but that was also a bit of a local kid going to the local school (even if he was an MSU fan growing up), but otherwise he's 38th in the conference in recruiter rankings this year and 80th (!) last year, and he wasn't that a crack recruiter at IU either (I remember looking once and he was consistently their 4th or 5th-rated recruiter). So while he seems like a really good coach on the field for whatever reason it doesn't seem to be clicking with high-ranked recruits while other guys on the staff has done better.
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:19 AM ^
I'd hate to be a coach during this period of transparency regarding money. Players absolutely deserve to be paid but a governing body with rules and regulations is needed.
As is, it is the wild wild west. The irony is that there isn't much transparency after all.
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
show me the money....
after we've established a meaningful relationship and you and your staff have proven you can develop my talent bettering my odds at an NFL career when someone else will show me more money.
January 3rd, 2023 at 11:56 AM ^
Ah yes, relationships. Collins Acheampong's relationship with Miami was so good they paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:19 PM ^
I don't think this is all too shocking - I think we would all pretty much to do the same thing. (Especially if you're an elite recruit and are looking at this NIL deal as pretty much just a stepping stone to the NFL.) Personal anecdote - I am casually looking at the job market and my #1 factor is work/life balance. Money is important - I am not taking a job that pays XX% less than another job - but it's definitely not going to be my deciding factor. It seems the only variable is what that XX% is - for some recruits it's going to be more, others it's going to be less. But I think it's reasonable to assume everyone weighs other considerations besides money in some way shape or form.
January 3rd, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
If there's a recruit that is "all about the money" then that's what they'll chase every year and likely enter the portal more than once. And probably not play very well at the next level either
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:05 PM ^
Teams that recruit very well are typically in talent rich areas. Michigan does not have that luxury and it will always be extremely challenging to pull in top 5 classes until the state produces elite talent on a regular basis. You can only pull so many kids from FLA,TX,GA etc. You have to fix the root of the problem which is in state population and development.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:44 PM ^
2121,
I agree about “talent density” in different parts of the country.
Harbaugh realized that which is why he wanted to conduct camps in different parts of the country. I thought the reason was two-fold. First, expose Michigan’s football program and staff to players “early”, so Michigan is on their radar as they grow, develop, and reach their college decision. Second, to identify potential talent / players that would fit into the program, etc.
There is one decision / ruling that irks me to this day. That was, the NCAA limiting college staffs to where and how they cold recruit and host / participate in camps. That ruling definitely favored the SEC / ACC. Another example of incompetence by Emmert.
January 3rd, 2023 at 1:36 PM ^
Player 3 and I don’t quite see eye to eye.
$1M?…..where do I sign?
January 3rd, 2023 at 2:23 PM ^
Can we get a clarification on NIL and scholarships?
January 3rd, 2023 at 2:46 PM ^
This reminds me of surveys on employees and their decision making when accepting job offers. "Location, Benefits, Perks, Career Advancement, etc" and then the data shows that almost to a man, all people take the highest paying offer all of the time.
January 3rd, 2023 at 4:12 PM ^
If every single person did nothing but solely maximized the amount of money they could make there would be hundreds of professions with nobody working in them. People might take the most money within a given field or geographic area, but money is not the #1 decider of their choices.
Lots of people don't take the highest paying job. Basically everyone that works in government at a high level is doing so for less money, most people working in nationally recognized non-profits could be making more money as consultants or other jobs, basically any doctor working in a rural or tribal area, to my knowledge one of the hardest jobs in the country to get is the public defenders office in san francisco and federal judicial clerkships are ridiculously competitive and exclusively to to people who could be making more at the big law firms as first years.
Of course most people want to make more money but there are a million factors that influence the jobs people get. They might take the highest offer in a specific field but there are reasons they chose that field. Just like a recruit in Alabama might take whoever offers more between Auburn and Alabama but the #1 priority is actually staying close to home. In that case money mattered and also wasn't the #1 priority.
January 3rd, 2023 at 4:23 PM ^
So it sounds like these athletes are more interested in transformational than transactional...?
Dunno, that doesn't seem to completely match some of the results we've seen, but we'll have to see how this plays out over more seasons.
January 3rd, 2023 at 4:23 PM ^
Yeahhhh I aint taking the word of 17-18 year olds
January 3rd, 2023 at 6:31 PM ^
Tangentially: OSU's SID sure seems to be working hard to get signees to claim that they turned down significantly more money [Keinholz (made this claim about Washington of all places), and 5-star WR Inniss more recently] in the wake of Day's earlier comments about needing "about $13M" to keep their roster intact. All this comes quite recently, and amid other rumblings that their NIL isn't up to the standards of other places. Surely this is coincidental, no?
/s
January 4th, 2023 at 10:52 PM ^
LOL
So all those guyz Dabo got were just very religious and pious. Cmon man.