SAN ANTONIO — How much do incoming recruits earn from name, image and likeness (NIL) deals? It’s among the most speculated topics in college football, with rumors far outpacing actual information and context. With more than 100 of the nation’s best players gathered in San Antonio earlier this year for the All-American Bowl, 247Sports asked more than two-dozen blue-chip recruits about a variety of topics, including the engine of the recent disruption in the sport: Money and how it’s distributed.
“Everybody likes money, but it’s kind of the money?” a top-100 recruit said about what he’d change in college football. “I think people don’t play for the right thing in college football no more because they’re getting paid almost the same amount as NFL players, so it’s kind of the money.
“But I like money, so I ain’t going to say that.”
Recruits did say a lot about money in their conversations with 247Sports. To allow players to speak freely, 247Sports granted them anonymity to discuss the details of their contracts and how the NIL process works in college football recruiting. It’s an issue that’s largely been shrouded in secrecy given the fact that NIL contracts are not publicly disclosed — collectives are private entities — and are not available through public record requests, like coaching contracts are, at public schools.
Fifteen four- and five-star recruits disclosed to 247Sports either exactly what they’ll receive or around what they’ll earn at their school of choice. The values run the gambit from a few thousand a month to around a million a year.
Recruit 1: $350,000 a year
Recruit 2: $400,000 a year
Recruit 3: $120,000 a year
Recruit 4: $180,000 a year
Recruit 5: $120,000 a year
Recruit 6: $72,000 a year
Recruit 7: $75,000 a year
Recruit 8: $400,000 a year
Recruit 9: Around $1 million a year
Recruit 10: A few thousand dollars a month
Recruit 11: Between $600,000 and $800,000 a year
Recruit 12: Low-to-mid-six figures a year
Recruit 13: Around $200,000 a year
Recruit 14: $500,000 a year
Recruit 15: Around $150,000 a year
That’s how much blue-chip recruits can make — every player surveyed held a 91 rating or better in the 2024 Top247. Here’s what they had to say about how NIL works.
HOW THE CONTRACTS WORK
NIL agreements can vary greatly from school to school and collective to collective, but there were some commonalities in the responses when 247Sports asked players how their deals were structured.
Usually, the first year of a contract is guaranteed at a certain number. But there are often incentives for players to raise their NIL payments based on how they play. Conversely, a few players mentioned their NIL payments could go down if they don’t perform well. Beyond cash, players often also receive additional incentives like a leased vehicle.
“The way I have it, the first two years are 400 guaranteed, and after my sophomore year I can ask to renegotiate based on how I play,” Recruit 2 said.
“If you produce, you get bonuses,” Recruit 12 said. “Some schools do it differently, but that’s how ours does it.”
As for what players must do to earn the money, responses varied from appearing at charity events and social media posts to just being on the team.
“It’s a collective thing,” Recruit 6 said. “Just be part of the team, everybody gets it.”
Recruit 2 said that there were no off-field requirements tied to his pay.
“I think it’s just from the collective,” he said.
There are some schools, even top-25 programs, that do not aggressively hand out NIL dollars. One elite recruit who signed with an annual conference title contender said that it’s on the players to seek out potential deals.
They’re not handed to them as an incentive to enroll.
“We get NIL,” one top-100 player said. “We have to earn it, though. He’s not going to point us to people and say, ‘Oh, give him an NIL deal.’ They have to do their research on us to come give us NIL.”
As for what happens if a player chooses to enter the transfer portal — a commonality in this era — most recruits told 247Sports that their contracts would be void if they opted to leave.
MYTHS ABOUT NIL
Thirteen million dollars for a transfer portal class, $30 million for a recruiting class — you hear it all in the college football rumor mill, where posters like Sliced Bread can lead to national headlines.
But what’s real with NIL numbers and what isn’t?
You can go ahead and trash any thoughts that most recruits are getting paid millions annually to attend a school.
“People get paid to play,” Recruit 14 said. “But the numbers that you be hearing are outrageous. … People are just lying and pushing it past what it is.”
This isn’t to say that the numbers won’t approach a million a year for special players at specific positions.
Recruit 14 told 247Sports that he and several other All-American Bowl players discussed how some quarterbacks could command a million dollars a year on the open market.
As for the valuations made by outsiders, players had mixed responses about how accurate those are.
Multiple blue-chip recruits told 247Sports that the numbers they see are spot-on while others, like Recruit 1, said that his were way off.
“I’d say 50-50,” Recruit 6 said. “Speculation sounds better than whatever actually happens.”
There’s also an assumption out there that players always take the most money. But that isn’t always the case, recruits insisted. A pair of five-star recruits told 247Sports that they took less money to attend the school they signed with, which meant losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.
NIL is just one part of the equation as players make their decisions. Some will prioritize money. But others will go where they’ll be developed or simply want to be.
“My school wasn’t the school that offered me the most money,” Recruit 3 said. “A lot of schools just threw out money and stuff. But I’m not chasing money. I want to play and perform.”
For as many good things that come from NIL, there are horror stories out there about bad contracts from collectives or marketing agents.
Look no further than former Florida DT Gervon Dexter, who signed a $436,485 NIL deal with a speculative investment capital company in 2022 with the caveat that the company, Big League Advanced Fund, would get 15% of his NFL earning for the next 25 years.
That type of predatory deal, along with collectives not coming through on payments, is something that athletes are leery of.
One top-100 recruit told 247Sports the schools that made him the wariest were those who offered an open checkbook from the start.
“Schools just told me, ‘Give me a number and you can commit at that number,” that recruit said. “It was intriguing, but it kind of felt like a trap.”
As for when NIL comes up in conversations with schools and collectives, recruits said it can vary greatly.
Recruit 3 said that NIL money didn’t come up with any schools until his official visits, while Recruit 7 said that some schools just “throw it out there” very early in the process.
Some recruits were largely kept out of the process, too, by their parents and representation.
One five-star recruit told 247Sports that he’d been “domed” from the negotiations to allow him to focus on everything else.
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“You have to thread out the real, because people throw numbers at you a lot,” Recruit 11 said.
