NIL or no NIL, recruiting never will mean much without coaching

The alarm bells are being rung from Coral Gables to Pullman, from Chestnut Hill to Westwood. Texas and Texas A&M just got through buying their recruiting classes, the bellringers say, and that’s just the trailer for the horror show to come.

Could be. It could be that NIL money will buy success in college football. It could be that the level playing field has tilted inexorably and irrevocably toward the two enormous, oil-rich universities in the Lone Star State. It could be that money will solve all the problems that have prevented Texas from winning more than one national championship in the past 52 seasons and Texas A&M from winning a conference championship in the past 23.

Money, after all, has enabled the Dallas Cowboys to appear in none of the past 26 Super Bowls. The Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Yankees have led MLB in payroll in eight of the past 10 seasons and won one World Series combined. The team with the No. 1 NBA payroll has won one of the past 10 championships — the same as No. 19.

Every sports fan who pays attention understands that largesse without expertise is a dull blade. If you don’t believe me, ask the Glazers how it’s going with Manchester United. Money doesn’t cure every ill. It even magnifies a few of them.

Texas A&M has a history of setting the market. Forty years ago, the Aggies offered Bo Schembechler the outrageous sum of $2.25 million over 10 years to leave Michigan. Schembechler, who was making $60,000 a year in Ann Arbor, said no. “The whole attraction was money, and that’s no reason to take a job,” Schembechler said.

So A&M raised the stakes, and lured Pitt coach Jackie Sherrill by paying him $1.7 million over six years. “According to the best estimates of several officials with a broad knowledge of higher-education matters, no other person has ever received so much in pay from an American university,” the New York Times reported.

Sherrill, of course, went on to win six consecutive national championships with the Aggies. Oh, check that — he won three consecutive Southwest Conference titles.

And it’s not as if the other schools in the coaching market didn’t catch up to Texas A&M. Florida made Steve Spurrier the first million-dollar coach in the mid-1990s. Money no longer flowed into college football; it gushed, coming in hard and fast, with unheard-of amounts settling in the pockets of coaches.

Flash forward to 2017. Texas A&M lured Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher, who had what the Aggies wanted — a national championship (2013), a pedigree and a hankering for a new job. A&M gave Fisher a $75 million contract over 10 years, all guaranteed money.

After Fisher led the Aggies to three national championships, A&M tore up that contract and gave him a 10-year, $95 million contract, all guaranteed. Oh, check that — Fisher didn’t win a national championship. Or a conference championship. Or a division championship. But he did get the new contract.

Fisher has made the Aggies better. They went 9-1 amid the COVID chaos of 2020, narrowly missing the playoff, and they took down No. 1 Alabama last season. They also went 0-for-Mississippi and finished 4-4 in the SEC in Year Four, which is a mystery given that he is good for a top-10 recruiting class every year.

So you’re saying there’s more to winning than being a good recruiter?

This year, Fisher and his staff finished No. 1 in recruiting. Fisher took umbrage when accused of using NIL to buy his recruiting class, more likely, as Sam Khan Jr. wrote in The Athletic earlier this month, because it cast aspersions on his work ethic rather than on his work ethics.

Besides, it turns out the wall separating NIL deals from being used as recruiting inducements, the wall erected in NCAA legislation and a few state laws, is made of Kleenex. Once the Aggies and the Longhorns charged through it, others won’t be far behind.

It may be remarkable that, in less than one full recruiting cycle, NIL became a multimillion-dollar industry. But anyone worried that it will reshape the power structure of college football needs to take a long, deep, stress-reducing breath. No matter how good the raw material, the finished product depends on the skill of the person using it.

The Aggies and the Longhorns, or whichever program comes up with the NIL cash a year from now, may bring in the finest bricks and mortar. Now tell me who the contractor is. It’s too early to give second-year coach Steve Sarkisian a grade at Texas. In eight seasons at three marquee college football programs, Sark has gone 51-42. Texas bet $34.2 million over six years that Sark 3.0, having gone through the Magical Saban Refinishing Machine, would be a different coach than the guy who had lost at least three conference games in every full season. The Longhorns went 5-7, 3-6 in the Big 12, in 2021.

Fisher and Sarkisian proved they could recruit before NIL. Now they have proved they can recruit with NIL. No one is giving out rings for winning recruiting. There’s more to it. The programs that have taken out long-term leases in the College Football Playoff — the Georgias and Alabamas, the Clemsons and Oklahomas and Ohio States — have had coaches who can recruit. Those coaches then have taken their recruits and transformed them into a top-five team.

NIL or no NIL, recruiting never will mean much without coaching. That college football rule will never change.