Don’t Believe Everything You Read About NIL Deals in the Transfer Portal

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The rumor mill for NIL collective deals is now an annual tradition in college sports, a space where stories of alleged offers to athletes in the transfer portal go viral on almost a weekly basis.

But many of the biggest headlines report vastly overinflated numbers, according to four industry experts who work for or with collectives and athletes. “You can say whatever you want, because no one knows … no one talks numbers,” one Power 5 collective operator tells Front Office Sports. “Even our athletes lie about what they make to other athletes on the team.”

Within days of the portal opening this year, on Dec. 4, a bombshell report suggested that Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. fielded an offer around $20 million, presumably an attempt to lure him to stay with the Buckeyes an extra year instead of declaring for the NFL draft.

But none of the four experts FOS spoke to believed that figure was accurate. Even if it were, the offer would be a significant outlier in the collective market.

“On the record: It’s absolute bulls—,” says Jason Belzer, head of Student Athlete NIL, which helps run collectives for schools across the country.

A slightly more tempered but still jaw-dropping headline: Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule said in December that a “good quarterback” costs somewhere between $1 million and $2 million in the portal.

“That’s just completely made up,” the Power 5 collective operator says.

It could be the case for Rhule and the Cornhuskers, but certainly not for the vast majority of the Power 5, the same source says. So what does the overall collective market actually look like?

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One Power 5 collective operator says that even within the richest group of schools, there are three different tiers of collectives representing vastly different amounts of money for players. 

Sources agree that athletes employed by the top tier will make in the ballpark of seven figures, but one added that some athletes make this amount of money due to a combination of collective earnings and other NIL contracts.

Some companies with access to collective contracts have attempted to publish aggregate data. Belzer reported that 61 “Power 4” one-year contracts that ran through his company totaled $7.3 million, with athletes receiving an average of $120,000. Other companies, like Opendorse and INFLCR, have also released aggregate data on the collectives they engage. 

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