Interesting article interviewing fb recruits on nil deals and inducements

This year may be the 1st year we see players opt out of playing in playoffs.......I think this is the beginning of the end of CFB unfortunately

I find this article interesting but also a bit over the map; they say everyone on the list is a 91+ in their ratings but that spans 247 players, including a guy who was the 46th-rated CB in the country heading to Cincy up to the #1 QB in the country going to Florida.  So yeah, there would be a range across those levels.  Also, the recruits then say this, which does make me wonder if perhaps there is some exaggeration already going on:

You can go ahead and trash any thoughts that most recruits are getting paid millions annually to attend a school.

“People get paid to play,” Recruit 14 said. “But the numbers that you be hearing are outrageous. … People are just lying and pushing it past what it is.”

Because the ranges here are sort of wild - a million dollars to "between $600k and $800k" and "low-to-mid six figures" - and seemingly have so many caveats that it's hard to know what's realistically possible and what's "win both the Heisman and a national title for 2 straight years" type incentives.

Also, I'd like to know how these actual contracts work out vs. what they claim they're going to get paid.  For every article you read about guys getting paid a lot of money you also see stories where collectives and other deals fall apart or the checks never quite hit the numbers they expect.  

I know we're in the mode of shitting on Michigan for everything and assuming that every guy who signs at UM either loves the maize and blue unconditionally or is so stupid with money that he doesn't seek out NIL deals, but I think the "school doesn't help with NIL deals" is misleading in that those are supposed to be handled by the collective; that doesn't mean these guys aren't getting paid, it's just that the role of the collective is to serve that purpose.  

Here's a good quote right under that one from the OP:

“We get NIL,” one top-100 player said. “We have to earn it, though. He’s not going to point us to people and say, ‘Oh, give him an NIL deal.’ They have to do their research on us to come give us NIL.”

That seems...pretty reasonable.  Miami and A&M have been trying to buy wins for years and are terrible at it.  And that's what I keep asking from anyone but especially with UM and people's hatred for its NIL policy - provide actual numbers both for UM and similar schools around their NIL programs.  Talk to guys who left the school and are free to talk about what they got.  Get numbers on what other programs paid.  Because for every Hunter Dickinson who complained for years that he couldn't use UM's brand when he was on some shitty Bartstool podcast where they called Tom Izzo a Nazi, you have guys like Blake Corum and JJ McCarthy who apparently made quite a bit of money and didn't have any issues.  So I want to know how UM is trailing, if they are, and what makes them so much worse than everyone else beyond the fact they just aren't willing to drop a couple million in the hands of Bryce Underwood before he's taken a step onto the field.

This was from one of Holland's columns a couple weeks ago.

A recruit probably put it best: “One SEC school said they would pay me a lot of money to go there. I would go to Michigan for 1/4 of that.”

Last year details of Jaden Rashada's NIL deal with a University of Florida collective was released after the collective could not come up with the money. At the time, a website published the whole contract, but I couldn't find it in my quick look up. Here are the highlights.

I assume that most NIL deals have some sort of similar requirements. 

Rashada signed the NIL contract that day. It called for a $500,000 up-front payment. After that, his payments would increase from $250,000 a month as a freshman, to $291,666.66 a month as a sophomore, to $375,000 a month as a junior, rounded out with $195,833.33 monthly payments as a senior, so long as he fulfilled the following obligations:

• Residence in Gainesville, Fla.
• At least one branded Twitter post and one branded Instagram post per month.
• Up to eight fan engagement events per year. These could include in-person appearances, social media engagements, video conferences or interviews. None would last longer than two hours.
• Autograph up to 15 pieces of merchandise per year.
  
   

Texas A&M's struggles are that Jimbo Fisher sucked as a coach and can't identify players who fit his team. It's not that players earning money makes them worse. Otherwise, every NFL free agent who is "induced" to a new team would suck.

This is a bubble that will most certainly burst, no way this is a sustainable model. Insane times we live in.

Want to bet what school they are talking about when they say a school isn't offering NIL.  Might not be the only factor these kids are looking at but zero NIL doesn't really work. 

Like why would you expect the school to do your Name/Image/Likeness deals for you? The whole point was for student athletes to make money off of their own name and likeness. Not for the school to pay you for it.

Can we stop calling them STUDENT athletes now?  haha

Contracts only talk about playing football well, lol.  What a time to be alive. 

Now that the NIL genie is out of the bottle, it will be interesting to watch its evolution over time. Sooner rather than later, players at the collegiate level won't need the NFL to be set up for life. This will have ramifications downstream. 

Interesting times. Can't say that I like all of it.