How the Ohio State football team will navigate paying players directly

The Ohio State football program is going to have to learn how to navigate a new era of college football. Now that the NCAA settlement is finalized, the Buckeyes are going to have to pay players directly. How are they going to navigate that going forward?

Of all of the schools affected by this, the Buckeyes are in a better position to deal with this than others. They bring in more money than most other football programs. They can subsidize their own players. How they negotiate contracts is going to be the interesting part.

That's exactly what these schools will be doing. These players will soon become employees and will be negotiating contracts on their own behalf. How much money is a five-star recruit going to command? Are the Buckeyes going to be willing to fork over that cash? How do NIL collectives fit into this?

Collectives will keep raising money for the football program to use the money to pay players directly. What this does for recruiting, we don't know yet. It's already the Wild West out there when it comes to recruiting. I can only imagine that it will get worse now that players can be paid directly.

Will Ryan Day shift his recruiting efforts? Will they decide that they want the expensive five-star recruit? Or will he pay the less expensive four-star recruit in order to save some money and trust that his coaching can get him to play like a five-star recruit?

Those are the questions that coaches and programs everywhere will be asking themselves. Most of the schools in the Big Ten are going to be fine, but some of them won't. Schools like Northwestern and Rutgers are going to struggle. Their non-revenue sports are going to be in big trouble too.

This is the new world of college athletics. I'm not sure how it pans out, but it likely will be painful for some. The Ohio State football team should continue to flourish though.