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Kirby Smart shares on success of Georgia players in year one of NIL era

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•07/20/22•

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Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

NIL has been the hot topic in all of college sports for a year now, and SEC Media Days gives the conference’s coaches an opportunity to share how their student-athletes did. That’s exactly what Georgia head coach Kirby Smart did on Wednesday, telling reporters about the depth of the Bulldogs’ deals while also sharing a couple of compelling stories.

“I’ll be honest with you, I really don’t even want to do that because I feel like that’d be copy catting and carrying over,” Smart said when asked about Georgia’s NIL total in response to Nick Saban stating that Alabama players made $3 million last year. “Trust me, there’s a lot there. And we’re actually at 95 (players with deals) because when I said that yesterday, our representative at the collective told me it was 95.”

“We arguably had the highest paid defensive lineman, highest paid tight end and highest paid cornerback in the NIL market. Because after the National Championship, those three guys exploded, one talking about Jordan Davis and the other two are obvious (Brock Bowers and Kelee Ringo). When you look at that, it’s pretty substantial that we have depth in our NIL market,” he continued. “The unfortunate part of NIL is you hear all the negative and all the negative outweighs the positive in the media. You’ve got a guy like Dan Jackson who is not on scholarship who’s having the use NIL to pay for his college education and help himself out with NIL. We’ve got a guy, Micah Morris, who’s got an ill father. He’s able to send money back to his dad who is on dialysis. There’s countless stories like that. I would rival anybody in the country with 95 NIL deals coming off a National Championship and pretty gaudy number total that we’ve been able to give out. But I don’t think it’s about marketing that and selling that. It’s more about the depth of our deals than the total amount.”

While Davis is off to the NFL and set to make more than $17 million over the course of four seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles including a $9.5 million signing bonus, the other two players that Smart referenced are still in school. That means that they’ve got NIL Valuations from On3 with Bowers coming in at No. 9 among College Football players and Ringo at No. 22. Their respective valuations are $889,000 and $668,000.

And Kirby Smart is right. Bowers and Ringo are both atop the On3 NIL Valuation for their positions. In fact, Georgia has another most valuable player at their position, defensive lineman Jalen Carter with an NIL Valuation of $803,000, good for No. 13 among College Football players. Stetson Bennett comes in at No. 10 among quarterbacks and No. 19 in College Football with a valuation of $704,000. Other Georgia players in On3’s top 100 for College Football are Nolan Smith (No. 44 – $513,000), Christopher Smith (No. 52 – $462,000), Broderick Jones (No. 56 – $447,000), Arik Gilbert (No. 76 – $351,000) and Kendall Milton (No. 90 – $313,000).

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