So, a few days ago, Will Baizer (well known Texas blogger) tweeted this:
BREAKING: Texas is in the process of putting together a $3M NIL deal to sway Cincinnati DE Oseph Jossai.— Will Baizer (@WillBaizer) May 4, 2022
Now, if you spend way too much time following college football (like me), or you're a Longhorns fan, you would've gotten the joke: Joseph Ossai is a former Texas player who was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals. Oseph Jossai is a fictional person (hence the joke).
Well, because the internet is the internet, a lot of people didn't get the joke (/didn't take 30 seconds to google the name). Including some professionals:
Have to agree with @jasondhorowitz on @ESPNU. This feels wrong! NIL went too far this time. pic.twitter.com/D45J9Mx5MP— Will Baizer (@WillBaizer) May 5, 2022
Look at what you've done.... pic.twitter.com/Ff3BmMi6Ec— Big B. (@DaBurd70) May 5, 2022
So, I share this with you to (a) laugh at the stupid people (especially the professionals) who couldn't be bothered to check this, but also (b) remind everyone that 99% of players (save for your Reggie Bushes, your Trever Laurences, etc) won't be getting anything close to 'NFL Money' for college ball.
Comments
The scary ones are the NIL reports that each O line guy (for example) will get at least 10-50k guaranteed each year with million/billionaires lining up to fund self sustaining endowments for these positions.
They were probably already getting a similar amount under the table pre-NIL 🤷♂️
A friend of mine started an NIL firm last summer and he has maintained that many of these reported figures are wrong. The Tennessee thing for Iamalaeava is real, but a good many of these reports of huge bags and such are exaggerated or fictitious.
I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but it would be interesting to see tax returns for collectives. I'm sure something like that will leak in the next year or 2, and that will give us some insight into how much athletes are actually making a some schools.
My guess is that you have:
If we assume that each team has 85 scholarship players:
Let's assume those top 15 players will all go to a top 15 program. The next 600 players will probably pick a top 40 school based on wherever they can get NFL readiness training, playing time, and like the coach (just like they do today). The next 1000+ players will probably make the same choice, just without interested from the top 15-25 teams.