The biggest advantage in getting to fully-weaponizing NIL will be having access to opportunity density. Texas, USC, and Miami are 3 easy entities in which this is simply illustrative. There are more ways to get involved with a player when the market is larger. It puts programs like Auburn or Oklahoma State, fringy occasional top 10 programs even, at inherent disadvantages on a natural level. National brands like ND and whoever is hot at a moment like Bama or Clemson, can leverage larger markets too, but there will be diminishing returns after a few big and interested players.
That said, it's a simple path towards overt cheating as well, and given what we know at this point about the NCAA willful ignorance to this whole landscape, it's likely to not actually be cheating and simply the de-amateurizing of college athletics and open season for running a payroll.
Programs that can create an optimized floor of salary band for the program will ultimately recruit the best from a depth perspective. Any program worth mentioning will be able to enable 6 and ultimately 7 figure compensation for the elite skill players, particularly at QB. So what? The programs that can reflect a $2k+/month payout to back-up guards and DTs will wind up filling the trenches and depth charts with the most talent.
Setting that up means either having a rabid set of wealthy sole proprietors who will throw money at payroll without professional league expected returns or having enough opportunities across the school's natural market to build up a book of paying entities irrespective of a player's overall ranking or stature. The former exists more in fan fiction than in reality. The latter will occur more frequently in larger markets with real fanbases.
Think about, not fully hypothetically, if someone has influence or control over marketing decisions, social media, branding, etc., for roughly 60 businesses. Were they so inclined and could see the value for even a fraction of those businesses, they could work up a plan to get everyone below the Bijan level at UT that makes the depth chart a monthly stipend of $500-$10000/month during the 6 month season and make it make sense for their businesses financially. Anything B2C makes sense. Anything in the area in which an event can take place could make sense in terms of involving players from the school.
Basically, NIL just unlocked potential for some of the cheapest social influencer deals in history, and stacking those up for each player can still ensure that your top 40 guys at any point in time are making elite money for an 18-23 year old.
I talked to a guy today who told me that this won't effect the bag game and I just laughed. This is chaos in real time. No one knows a fucking thing, so the dumbest thing anyone can do is take a position that this won't change much. Right.
This changes everything. Some places will have no recourse but to continue leaning heavily on dropping bags, but places like Texas can now begin the process of using its market and brand to help its players get paid in ways no one has ever fathomed. We have no idea how wide and deep this will get.