Texas and Oregon put the CFB world on tilt with their respective NIL efforts. Many alumni bases are reacting pragmatically and trying to build something competitive of their own that fits their specific goals and means. Some bases will be able to compete across all sports in an arms race with Oregon and Texas. Ohio State and Michigan. Notre Dame and Penn State. Maybe Georgia. They’ll have to want to do it, of course. There are others like Bama and LSU who will figure out how to be competitive at the top of the elite recruit list every year, but their bases have already blanched at what it is going to take to do it. The price of poker went up. Bag money is dwarfed already.
Then you have Oklahoma, USC, and Tennessee. Kansas too, bizarrely, and I’m sure we’ll hear about more, but all of these groups basically just decided to tout made up shit or vapor prospective nonsense. I guess they figure they’ll just figure it out on the fly or are equating some of it to the black market where they’ll say one thing and do another with players and get away with it. It doesn’t work that way when players, parents, handlers and agents can talk openly to whoever the fuck they feel like. So yeah, Addison hadn’t seen a dime as of a few days ago. Barry Switzer just making shit up on behalf of OU might stall some momentum away from them for a bit, but the recruit-side wises up quickly and they’re going to start asking for proof and asking on-campus players for truth.
ATM is in a whole different situation. They went full big black bag, tried to mock NIL to recruits as fake shit and got away with that for a spell, and expected to establish themselves as a player in the under the table game for the foreseeable future. In one of the more ironic twists even for the aggies, it appears as though their zeal for coming over the top of accepted norms in the stealth game has caused two major reverberations against them - 1) they accelerated everyone else’s interest in NIL as a means of countering their bag behavior and 2) they have become everyone’s favorite whipping boy in negative recruiting. Fisher and the AD attempting to “I am not a crook!” all of it and pointing fingers elsewhere and making threats hasn’t helped their cause. In the most on-brand aggie maneuver of all time, ATM pulled the NIL bookshelf on top of themselves just as they thought they were getting going.