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Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes assembled an incredible roster for the 2024 college football season, but it didn’t come cheap.
After losing their third consecutive game to rival Michigan and watching the Wolverines go on to win a national champion, the Buckeyes did everything they could to ensure that would never happen again.
They hit the transfer portal hard, landing superstars such as Caleb Downs from Alabama, Quinshon Judkins from Ole Miss and Will Howard from Kansas State.
But as you can imagine, all of that talent comes with a price in the era of NIL.
New athletic director Ross Bjork, who joined Ohio State after a stint at Texas A&M, says that the Buckeyes paid more for their roster than any team in the country a year ago.
“In fact, the university is rich enough that its donor-led collective and brand affiliates disbursed to Buckeyes football players ‘around $20 million’ this past year, said Ross Bjork, the Ohio State athletic director. In all likelihood, that figure ranks first in America,” Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports reports.
But wait, there’s more! That number is just the baseline for what Bjork says Ohio State is likely to spend going forward.
When discussing the newly agreed upon revenue-share model, Bjork said the number is only going to rise.
“Something overshadowed is this money goes up,” he told Dellenger. “Right now, we’re talking $21.5 million, but the second year, it goes up to $24 million and then it goes up, like, $1 million a year. We keep using a $22 million number, but we should really be talking $24-25 million.”
Even with revenue sharing, NIL isn’t going away.
“We’re telling them there’s going to be three buckets: traditional financial aid, revenue sharing and the name, image and likeness (NIL) category,” Bjork said.
So the amount paid to players in coming years is going to be greater than ever. That’s unquestionablty great for big-name athletes. It’s also great for big-name schools.
Everybody else? That remains to be seen…