College Football Playoff era explains incentives for NIL collectives

If you study a college football program’s recent past and compare it to the program’s history since the dawn of the sport, you can figure out which schools’ fan and donor bases arguably have the greatest incentives to be aggressive in the NIL era. State NIL laws and the NCAA’s interim NIL policy allow fans and donors to contribute — literally — to their program’s success in ways they weren’t allowed to prior to July 2021, often through NIL collectives. Some state legislators have amended their NIL laws to allow institutions to help facilitate NIL opportunities or for collectives to play a more active role.

NIL laws and policies could potentially allow a school that’s in the midst of an extended national championship drought to reclaim its previous standing nationally, or even to reach new heights.

Since the start of the College Football Playoff era in the 2014 season, Kansas has compiled a record of 14-79, which is a winning percentage of just .151. That’s dismal, even by the Jayhawks’ standards. The program has an all-time .454 winning percentage, which ranks seventh-worst among Power 5 programs, according to Sports Reference, when including vacated games.

Kansas’ pre-CFP winning percentage was .478.

If you subtract Kansas’ CFP-era winning percentage from its pre-CFP winning percentage, you get a difference of nearly 33 percentage points, or .328. That’s the worst mark in the Power 5.

The Power 5 program with the second-worst differential in its winning percentages before and after the start of the 2014 season?

That’s Kansas’ former Big 12 foe, Nebraska. The difference between the Huskers’ pre-CFP winning percentage (.700) and its CFP-era winning percentage (.453) is .248.

In addition to Lincoln, Nebraska, being home to several third-party technology and compliance providers in the NIL industry, the Nebraska-focused representation company Athlete Branding & Marketing and its NIL collective N100 have been active in the NIL landscape. On3’s Jeremy Crabtree believes either entity could be deserving of a future spot on On3’s list of the most ambitious NIL collectives.

Here you can view an interactive scatter plot of the pre and post-College Football Playoff winning percentages for every Power 5 program, plus Notre Dame.

Championship-winning programs supported by NIL collectives

Texas has the sixth-worst gap in winning percentage from prior to the CFP era (.708) compared to during the CFP era (.535).

Three NIL collectives support the Longhorns, plus some of their athletes are involved in the YOKE-backed Austin NIL Club and The Players’ Lounge subsidiary Burnt Orange Heroes. The Clark Field Collective ranks No. 9 on On3’s list of the top 20 most ambitious NIL collectives.

Horns with Heart, another Texas collective, didn’t make the cut, yet it’s offering $50,000 to every Texas offensive lineman.

Tennessee, whose donors launched the Spyre Sports Group that ranks as On3’s most ambitious collective, has the ninth-worst differential among Power 5 programs. Its winning percentage since 2014 is nearly 160 percentage points worse than it was prior to 2014 — .684 vs. .525.

Tennessee played in back-to-back national championship games in the ’90s, while Texas appeared in two in a five-year span the following decade. However, the two schools are just 52-47 and 53-46, respectively, in the CFP era.

In March, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel reported that a five-star recruit in the class of 2023 signed an agreement with a NIL collective that could pay him more than $8 million by the end of his junior year of college. This recruit is widely believed to be Tennessee five-star quarterback commit Nico Iamaleava. 

Ambitious NIL collectives support contenders, hopefuls

Among the most ambitious NIL collectives, you’ll find organizations that are designed to support players at programs that are currently competing for national championships. These include The Foundation at Ohio State, High Tide Traditions for Alabama and Classic City Collective for Georgia. In June, Ohio State coach Ryan Day told members of the Columbus, Ohio, business community that his players needed roughly $13 million in NIL compensation in order for the Buckeyes to keep their roster intact.

The statement drew a wide range of reactions from his fellow Big Ten coaches, including Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh saying he thinks Michigan’s fan base could someday double that amount.

The list of the most ambitious NIL collectives also includes individuals and organizations that financially support programs that haven’t recently been in the national championship picture, yet hope to return to their past prominence, such as Nebraska, Tennessee and Miami.

Several of these programs are positioned in the lower right quadrant in the scatter plot below, which represents programs whose winning percentages in the CFP era lags behind their impressive pre-CFP winning percentages.

USC, which is backed by BLVD, LLC (No. 6 among the most ambitious collectives), and Florida State each rank among the Power 5 programs with one of the 20 largest gaps between their pre-CFP and CFP-era winning percentages.

The intersection of NIL, the Transfer Portal and the one-time transfer exception, which allows football and basketball players to play immediately at their new school, fuels speculation across the industry regarding recruiting inducements and pay-for-play allegations.

“We can’t promise anybody any money for play,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said in February. “Just about every transfer I’ve talked to was being offered money [from other schools], so it was a little ridiculous.”

The NCAA recently asked its member institutions for help in identifying violations of the association’s interim NIL policy and its subsequent NIL guidance.

Programs with largest differentials in win percentage

The Power 5 programs with the 25 worst differentials in their respective winning percentages from before and after the start of the CFP era are listed below.

In many cases, the contrast of recent seasons without bowl invitations compared to historical seasons of national championship contention helps to contextualize the current incentives for their fan bases to be aggressive in the NIL era.

Differentials in winning percentage before and after the start of the CFP era

1. Kansas: .328
2. Nebraska: .248
3. Syracuse: .209
4. Rutgers: .196
5. Vanderbilt: .177
6. Texas: .173
7. Arkansas: .161
8. Colorado: .161
9. Tennessee: .158
10. Illinois: .158
11. Oregon State: .158
12. Georgia Tech: .146
13. Arizona: .138
14. Purdue: .135
15. Texas Tech: .131
16. Maryland: .128
17. UCLA: .107
18. Florida State: .085
19. Boston College: .070
20. USC: .069
21. South Carolina: .055
22. Arizona State: .053
23. North Carolina: .052
24. Virginia: .045
25. California: .044