re: Are we starting to see the pendulum swing the other way?

I just wonder what smaller schools are doing. SEC schools pay all players a ‘base’ salary for being a scholarship football player…but those figures aren’t published I don’t think. Is Tulane paying all players…UCF?

$50k/yr is pretty damn nice for the 3 and 4 stars. Used to be you’d go to a smaller school for playing time…now you walk on hoping to get paid. I assume.

Who do you think loved College Station more? Walter Nolen or McKinley Jackson? Jacoby Matthews or the DL from Acadiana this year? I don’t doubt for a minute, because I’m an On3 and 247 subscriber that all 4 and in fact every OOS kid who chose A&M did so because they just love Jimbo and College Station.

Not yet unfortunately.

Pussy and money, son. It’s a tale that’s old as time.

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I don't see why you would promise a bunch of money to any 17/18 year old. NIL to me was all about letting the players who had already become college stars make money, not the 3rd string QB who was highly rated out of HS who hasn't played a meaningful snap.

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According to the market, it’s worth it. If you were correct, and it actually *wasnt* worth it, then we’d see the top of the polls loaded with teams that refuse to promise NIL money to recruits. Let me know when that happens.

The big breakaway will be the only way to police the money I figure in next 5-7 years the top 40 will get their own league own commission own tv contracts and reel in the money grabbers. I’m hoping it’s sooner rather than later

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why would they think they can’t get the highest NIL or close to it, get great development and go to the NFL?

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Guess you haven't been following Aggie football and recruiting for the last year or so. The biggest NIL bags weren't enough to keep all those blue-chippers at 8&4.

And now we're seeing top recruits rethink going there, despite getting (what we believe to be) the fattest NIL bags out there.

You can go to aTm and get a lot of NIL money, but an honest appraisal of that team shows you won't be developed in the same way as at LSU, Bama, Georgia, or hell even Florida or Ole Miss.

Six years into Jimboob's tenure, and they still haven't won anything other than the big pink donkey at the county fair shooting booth. Unless they win out and win BIG, I doubt Jimbo or his coaches will be there after the last game of the season. I don't think the biggest, fattest NIL payments could counterbalance the chaos that is coming to Aggieland.

That's just an example of the point I was trying to make: getting the biggest NIL bag may not be the best (or wisest) decision a top recruit can make. It might be a stretch to convince a recruit that getting 1-200K less in an NIL deal might be the better option (just guessing). But I think it's possible, and getting more likely as time goes on.

Aggie is one example - I'm sure there are other valid examples in other conferences (that I don't follow).

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Not like he had any Louisiana ties

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What?

He was born here and his Dad and most of his extended family still live here

Think this is a bit wishful thinking. Big NIL schools are putting plenty of kids into the league. It hasn’t been around enough to even see who is getting paid big in their second nfl contracts and if there schools are mega NIL schools or not.

We seem to under Kelly.

Be very selective which kids to target position by position

Set a bar and don't go above it. Gets too pricey, bail. Some kids get the extra push like Womack last cycle

Put the focus on culture fits, system fits, scouting and development.

Land a high percentage of the kids you focus the target on. The board doesn't seem to adjust very much.

Is it bad strategy? Who knows. Kelly has been described as smart so my guess is he took stock of the financial threshold we have and put together a plan to achieve success. It's why we are paying him 100 mil. Time will tell if it works or not. His vision just doesn't correlate with our(fans) lack of patience. At this point we have no choice but to watch it play out.

For the record, I believe NIL is grossly overthought and overemphasized by fans. The difference in an individual player situation isn't that much. The difference for schools like TAM is they have a larger(virtually unlimited) overall pool of money to secure a class. My point is, they can go top market for all 25(no limits so an arbitrary number) kids in their class while we have to be scrupulous with our spending to keep the class balanced and fill our needs with quality players even if not the top market guys. Just my opinion.