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As the college football transfer window draws to a close, perhaps the biggest surprisingly surrounds new Duke Blue Devils quarterback Darian Mensah. Mensah, a redshirt freshman, burst onto the scene with the Tulane Green Wave this season, throwing for 2,723 yards, 22 touchdowns and only six interceptions. And when he entered the transfer portal, many assumed he’d end up at either a powerhouse program or an NIL juggernaut.
The latter, it turns out, was true. But nobody expected that juggernaut would come in the form of the Blue Devils.
Duke had a surprising 9-3 season under first-year head coach Manny Diaz, led largely by quarterback Maalik Murphy. Murphy, who came to Duke from Texas, threw for 2,933 yards, 26 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. But he, too, entered the transfer portal following the season.
Most fans assumed Murphy was in search of a big payday. But now it seems the opposite may have been true. Recent reporting suggests that the Blue Devils encouraged Murphy to transfer in order to give Mensah a mind-blowing NIL deal worth a reported $8 million over two years.
Now Colin Salao of Front Office Sports reports that Mensah’s deal is likely to reset the market, with yet another big spike expected in the years to come.
“The offer showcases the steep year-over-year rise of the NIL market as Mensah, ranked by 247Sports as the No. 7 quarterback in the transfer portal, received deals worth more than twice as much as Cam Ward and Riley Leonard, two of last season’s top transfer quarterbacks,” Salao writes.
“But with revenue-sharing expected to come, some schools are already starting to spend big in anticipation of the spike. Others that already have massive budgets from their collectives are trying to use up what they’ve already raised before the new rules take effect.”
Ultimately, nobody seems to know the rules regarding NIL. In fact, nobody seems to know if there even are rules. But so long as nobody is going to enforce them, we can only expect the spending to rise in years to come.