Recruits' deals with NIL collectives continue to reshape football recruiting

More and more coaches are coming to the realization that thanks to NIL, pay for play is an undeniable reality in college football recruiting.

In early March, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel reported that a five-star 2023 recruit signed an $8 million NIL deal with a school’s collective. It’s believed that quarterback Nico Iamaleava is the five-star recruit behind the reported deal. It’s not been officially confirmed. But within 10 days of the deal being signed, Iamaleava committed to Tennessee.

Mandel reported Tuesday that he’s reviewed the contracts of three more NIL deals for recruits that have been struck with collectives. He said a four-star receiver struck a deal that could pay him more than $1 million over the next four years in exchange for his exclusive NIL rights. He also reported a defensive lineman ranked among the top 10 at his position received a three-year deal worth $1 million and that a three-star defensive lineman signed for $500,000 over four years.

While On3 has not been able to independently verify those deals, it sounds similar to what college coaches across the country have been whispering about more and more over the past few weeks.

For example, a Pac-12 coach told On3 his school was dropped from consideration by a four-star quarterback because a rival school’s collective offered a deal worth more than $1.5 million. One Big 12 coach told On3 he lost a three-star defensive recruit to a rival because of a $50,000 NIL deal with a collective. One Big Ten coach said recruits making deals with collectives are “everywhere.”

Collectives, which are independent of a university, can serve a variety of purposes. Most often, they pool funds from boosters and businesses, help facilitate NIL deals for athletes and also create their own ways for athletes to monetize their brands. Industry sources told On3 to expect every Power 5 school to be affiliated with at least one NIL-related collective by the end of 2022. 

‘Absolutely pay for play’

Of late, collectives appear to have become a powerful recruiting tool, leading to much angst among coaches across the country.

“Recruiting as we’ve known it is dead,” a Big 12 assistant told On3. “I honestly thought the NIL stuff was going to be about helping current players get what they’re worth. But now that it’s all about recruiting, it’s game over.”

That sentiment was echoed by a former NFL player who has been an assistant with two Pac-12 programs.

“It is NFL free agency without the rules and monitoring of money,” he said. “It just doesn’t feel right. “It’s not about recruiting. It’s about enticing. If it’s true, it’s pay for play. No way around it. It’s not NIL.”

An SEC director of recruiting said these cases “absolutely appears to be pay for play.”

“I’m 100% for NIL. … But this is too far,” he said. “It’s the exact thing that has always got you the death penalty and coaches show clauses. Hell, people in basketball are in jail right now for similar but different circumstances.

“The two ‘absolutely not’ things you have always been scared to do because you know when you are caught you are done as a coach, head coach, athletic director and even donor is pay for play and donors being involved with your recruits. But here we are.”

Coaches call for change with NIL’s impact on recruiting

Coaches are going on record about how they believe NIL deals with collectives have negatively impacted recruiting.

“It’s completely changed,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said recently. “It doesn’t even resemble what we used to do before. In every sense of the word, it’s different.

“Our reality is that it’s made what’s going on at certain places for a long time, it’s kind of put it out in the open. I’m a fan of guys being able to capitalize off their NIL. But there was no doubt it was going to seep into recruiting at some point. I think anybody that cares about college football is not real pleased with that.

“That wasn’t the intention. A lot of people voiced concerns when NIL came up and that there had to be a plan for that. And instead, we instituted NIL without any plan.”

Coaches say collectives ‘buying recruits’

During a recent interview with The Associated Press, Alabama coach Nick Saban called for NCAA leaders to make swift changes to NIL’s impact on recruiting.

“I don’t think what we’re doing right now is a sustainable model,” Saban said. “The concept of name, image and likeness was for players to be able to use their name, image and likeness to create opportunities for themselves. That’s what it was. So, last year on our team, our guys probably made as much or more than anybody in the country.

“But that creates a situation where you can basically buy players. You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know. And you can also get players to get in the transfer portal to see if they can get more someplace else than they can get at your place. We now have an NFL model with no contracts, but everybody has free agency. It’s fine for players to get money. I’m all for that. I’m not against that. But there also has to be some responsibility on both ends.”

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin recently compared the NIL’s impact on recruiting to the NFL.

“I guess I got called a clown before for saying how it is,” Kiffin said. “NIL has a lot to do with where players go, and to not think that is crazy. There are schools with no shot to recruit certain players. If a class has an average of $25 million, that’s $1 million a person. In NFL free agency, players go to the most money. These players are 17 and 18; they’re going to go where they get paid most.

“You’ve legalized paying players.”

NCAA: No quick fix on horizon

There don’t appear to be any fast solutions on the horizon.

NCAA president Mark Emmert said at the Final Four that the association needs to work with Congress to create a uniform NIL model across all 50 states in order to properly regulate it moving forward.

“It is, unfortunately, a circumstance where we’ve got now 30-plus different states with different laws,” he said. “We need to work with Congress to create one federal landscape. We’ve had a variety of legal actions in the courts with all of that.

“We have got to have Congress find a single legal model by which NIL and other relationships with student-athletes can be regulated. That’s going to be a big task.”

A big task that’s not going to get solved any time soon.

“It’s the [expletive] Wild West,” the SEC director of recruiting said. “And you better have your collective carry a big gun.”