Pete Thamel addresses 'front-loading' of NIL deals in college sports with pending House Settlement

Late last month, the Houston Chronicle‘s Kirk Bohls reported the Texas Longhorns are projected to spend “between $35 million and $40 million” on its 2025 football roster. The eye-popping number sent shockwaves throughout the collegiate sports world, and even prompted some Power Four athletic directors to address its veracity.

“It currently sits somewhere, ‘between $35 million and $40 million,’ which counts the likely revenue-sharing allotment expected to be $20.5 million as well as payouts through the Texas One Fund, a connected source tells the Houston Chronicle,” Bohls wrote.

But to hear ESPN insider Pete Thamel explain it, that elevated number is far more accurate than many want to believe, especially when the projected $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap figure some programs are expected to receive from the NCAA once the House Settlement is eventually approved is added in. That’s because some audacious Power Four programs are getting ahead of things and “front-loading” their 2025 rosters by offering big bucks to transfers and high school recruits before the ink dries on the settlement.

“If you think about front-loading this year, if you think about trying to recruit ahead and pay players in the ways you can do that, it doesn’t take a lot of math to get there,” Thamel said on Wednesday’s ESPN College GameDay Podcast. “The most interesting part to me is this: this is the classic behavior that all of a sudden everyone’s expecting to stop. Rules are set, and what are teams doing? Well, when the settlement comes, we need to abide by the rules, (but until then) we’re going to just go 1,000 mph to give ourselves some sort of gray area competitive advantage before that.

“I’m not saying they’re cheating. What I’m saying is rules in college sports, because there were unpaid players for so long, were made to be bent, were made to find workarounds and then rules came and you found new workarounds. That’s just the cat-and-mouse process we’ve seen in college athletics for as long as I’ve done this. … So, it’ll be interesting to see if all of a sudden that behavior just stops. But I’m guessing no.”

Pete Thamel: ‘The $2 million player in college basketball is a real thing’

That “front-loading” has even crossed over into college basketball, where some player are already drawing $2 million NIL deals. Earlier this year, On3 insider Pete Nakos reported “multiple top guards” have already landed deals north of $2 million. This is after big men like Great Osobor and Coleman Hawkins signed $2 million financial packages with Washington and Kansas State, respectively, last year.

“The $2 million player is not an anomaly any more. The $2 million player in college basketball is a real thing,” Thamel continued. “I think where some of these numerical totals are coming from is this — and you’re seeing it in recruiting, I bring up USC because they have the No. 1 class — I think there’s a lot of front-loading going on right now, where if you have the ability to pay high school players, you are doing so now to assure their commitment before the playing field is theoretically evened.

“Although it’s never going to be evened, and God bless the person that’s going to try to rein it in and decide who’s getting money outside the cap, and what’s legitimate NIL,” Thamel added. “These are all the questions that will be podcast topics until this settlement falls apart somewhere (in the future), hopefully it’s like 10 years from now so my hair’s not fully gray by then.”