NIL is keeping some players playing on Saturdays instead of trying their luck on Sundays

The news came so quietly that it scarcely qualified as news at all. When the deadline to declare early for the 2023 NFL Draft came in mid-January, 82 players had submitted their names.

That’s 18 percent fewer than the 100 who did so in 2022. That’s nearly 40 percent fewer than the 135 who did so in 2019.

The latter number reflects the extra eligibility that the NCAA handed out like Halloween candy after the pandemic had its way with college sports in 2020. That’s how Stetson Bennett just won his second national championship despite being older than Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert and Tom Brady.

OK, the fact-checkers correct me on Brady, but Bennett is older than 16 NFL quarterbacks.

It turns out that NIL churns out unintended consequences the way the NCAA hands out eligibility. Amid all the pearl-clutching about how NIL and the transfer portal have changed college football – witness assistants recruiting players on other rosters, NIL “marketers” becoming full-on agents for college players, players going into the portal and not finding a school to take them – it could be that at least one change is positive. They will help keep some players playing on Saturdays instead of trying their luck on Sundays.

The player who needs to leave early for financial reasons can remain in school, bring in income and try to improve enough to go earlier in the draft (and bring in even more income). The player who needs to round out his skills to impress the scouts can move to another school and learn another scheme. The player who simply needs a change of scenery has that opportunity. And every once in a while, the player who can make millions by staying may prefer to do that rather than make millions by leaving.

In case you’ve forgotten Johnny Manziel.

Manziel, the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner, came out early for the 2014 NFL Draft. He estimated to USA Today that had he returned for his fourth year at Texas A&M, his NIL income would have been “probably more than I made in my rookie year in the NFL. Probably more than I made in my second year in the NFL. Combined.”

Manziel, the forever outlier, would have thrived in the NIL era. The player who thrived the most in the NIL era last season, Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, came out early anyway. So did Crimson Tide linebacker Will Anderson Jr., Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud. ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. projects those four as the first four selections of the 2023 NFL Draft, and all of them have been on campus for three years. They are not who we are talking about here. There may come a time when NIL money outstrips what the NFL pays its top four picks (about $40 million last year), but not until Tim Tebow has a son (or daughter) who wins a Heisman.

We are talking about running back Blake Corum returning for a fourth year at Michigan. Corum is ranked 14^th in the On3 NIL 100 at a valuation of $1.2 million.

We are talking about the ACC quarterback merry-go-round. Phil Jurkovec went from Boston College to Pitt, Brennan Armstrong portaled from Virginia to North Carolina State and Sam Hartman transferred from Wake Forest to Notre Dame. We are talking about Walter Rouse leaving Stanford (and the opportunity to finish his undergraduate degree on the Farm’s dime) for a nice deal to play on the Oklahoma offensive line.

The draftniks think Hartman would have been a late-round pick had he chosen to move up to the NFL. Instead, Hartman decided to move up to Notre Dame, and that’s “move up” as in the intersection of athletic achievement and public attention, which is the same corner where NIL resides.

Hartman is a good-looking, well-spoken gunslinger of a quarterback. He made an estimated six-figure income at Wake last fall. Notre Dame will provide Hartman the opportunity to learn and play in a more NFL-friendly offense than the slow-mesh scheme at Wake, which puts up mad points and mad yards but is viewed by NFL scouts as something akin to a foreign language. And, in NIL terms, it’s Notre Dame, still among the bulliest of American sports pulpits.

Hartman is a college football star, and he is likely to become a bigger one this fall. That’s good for the sport. And it might work out OK for Wake Forest, too. If redshirt sophomore quarterback Mitch Griffis had to sit behind Hartman one more season, who’s to say he would stick around?

Armstrong might have come out for the NFL draft after 2021, when he threw for 4,449 yards and 31 touchdowns. He returned for a fourth season at Virginia, which proved to be an awful year in every way possible. Armstrong didn’t play well in the new scheme under coach Tony Elliott, and that’s before the real tragedy struck. The murder of three Cavaliers players caused the university to cancel the final two games of the season.

Rather than limp out to the NFL combine, Armstrong gets a fresh start and a new offense with the Wolfpack. In these first years of the NIL/portal era, it’s hard to know which changes are permanent and which are a result of the pandemic-fueled eligibility. Whatever the cause, fewer players are leaving for the NFL. Hartman, Armstrong and Jurkovec will be 24 before the 2023 season concludes. They are two years older than Bryce Young, Will Anderson Jr., Jalen Carter and C.J. Stroud. And so it goes.