Getty Image
- Lane Kiffin is not one to mince his words.
- He recently spoke about the new reality of NIL and hilariously joked about how much money Texas A&M spent on recruiting.
- Click HERE for more college football coverage!
The landscape of college football has changed with the new rules on Name, Image and Likeness. With a new, legal way to college athletes, there has been a clear and significant shift in the way that programs across the country do business.
Schools with the most money and boosters with the deepest pockets will have more success in recruiting, which should then lead to more success on the field.
Take Texas A&M for example.
Although the Aggies have yet to play a game after having a full year with the new rules on NIL, so the results have yet to be seen, the money has clearly made an impact on the recruiting front. Oil is expensive right now and those around College Station have seen significant growth to their bank accounts in recent months. In addition, the alumni base at a school like Texas A&M, which has the largest student body in the United States, is massive.
When the two factors are combined, there are a lot of people with a lot of money to siphon into the Aggies football program, both directly and indirectly.
While giving to the program directly is a big help in terms of upkeep, facilities, etc., it does not help with recruiting or paying players. But with NIL, there is a way to feed money indirectly into recruiting.
Boosters cannot give a recruit money for his commitment. However, boosters can do so through Name, Image and Likeness.
Here is how it reportedly plays out in College Station (and across the country):
- A recruit is targeted for a specific recruiting class.
- A “point donor” then heads the recruiting effort.
- The “point donor” gathers other donors around him.
- Those donors create an LLC.
- The LLC sponsors the targeted recruit and pays out deals for NIL if/when he enrolls.
- That recruit, upon arrival on campus, receives money from the LLC.
- In turn, the recruit promotes the LLC and its “cause,” whether that be a charity or a business.
Texas A&M currently holds the No. 1 recruiting class for 2022 and sits fifth for 2023. To get to that point, the boosters reportedly spent an unfathomable amount of money on NIL deals for their recruits. The numbers that have been thrown out there are absolutely insane.
That money was there because there are so many Aggie boosters with so much money. In turn, schools like Ole Miss, which has less than one third of the enrollment of A&M, are at a disadvantage. They do not have that same money to pay out amongst recruits.
Rebels head football coach Lane Kiffin addressed that notion on Tuesday. He spoke about NIL and even joked about the small fortune that the Aggies are spending on their recruiting classes.
Lane Kiffin: “We don’t have the funding resources as some schools with the NIL deals. It’s like dealing with salary caps.”
He says some schools can pay “5-10” times more.
“I joked I didn’t know if Texas A&M incurred a luxury tax with how much they paid for their signing class.”
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) February 1, 2022
Kiffin is absolutely right in what he is saying. Here are his full comments:
The game has changed and money talks. It always has and it always will, but with the new rules on NIL, it is a much bigger, completely different beast.