Ohio State Football: Don’t believe every NIL figure you see

NIL is not going anywhere. College players are going to be making money and there’s no going back to the way things used to be. Ryan Day even mentioned how much money he thinks the Ohio State football program needs to keep rosters intact in terms of NIL money from businesses.

At the same time, there are figures being thrown out there that are simply inaccurate. I’m sure you’ve seen them on social media. A player gets a $5 million deal here. Another one gets a $10 million deal. These reports float on social media and are taken as gospel.

What I would caution is that these enormous sums are likely not completely true. Because we are just fans and not actually part of the program, we don’t see the details of the NIL deals. We can’t see how the contracts are structured and what ultimately might lead to a total of that amount.

Perhaps a player gets that amount of money only if they stay for four years. Perhaps it’s tied to the number of appearances they make in the community or games they play for a program. A lot of these deals are structured like pro contracts and have similar stipulations.

The Buckeyes lead the country in NIL compensation. Yet, you don’t hear any outlandish figures like that being released about deals with an of Ohio State’s players. Why is that? Because they only get deals for their players that will actually give them money that is almost 100% guaranteed.

Other programs like to have these flashy numbers get leaked because they think it will attract other recruits to go there. Not the Ohio State football program. They don’t need to do things like that. Recruits know they’ll get NIL deals and have success on the field.

These days, that’s what’s most important to elite recruits.