If you haven’t heard, the embattled governing body of college sports recently released a dashboard that tracks reported NIL payments.

To quote captain obvious, “There is little transparency around the underlying data set used to power the NCAA’s dashboard, so its value is quite limited.”

Still, there is information there that we can combine with other sources to glean some insight into the sorts of front office financial decisions Virginia Tech will face going forward with its NIL payments to players.

NIL in the power conferences

From August 1, 2023 through July 31, 2024, 40.4% of all NIL deals at power conference schools went to football players.

The average total earnings among football players was $69,424, but that figure is skewed upward by highly-valued star players.

The median total earnings for P4 football players (think the 43rd most valued player on an 85-man roster) was just $3,557.

Small dollar deals comprise a surprisingly large portion of P4 football deals:

However, what really drives successful programs are the 10% of deals valued between $5k and $10k, and the 12% of deals valued at more than $10k.

The share of those large deals is likely much higher at blue blood schools. For a program like Virginia Tech, developing a solid base of $1k to $5k deals is critical to holding on to veteran players at key positions, such as along the offensive line.

Are these numbers to be believed?

To run a check on the NCAA’s dataset, I created the following table, making some assumptions about the number of players on the roster at each position. Here, we’re considering the future 105-man roster.

The above table yields a 105-man, P4 roster with $7,916,414 in NIL payments.

A lot of numbers get thrown around, but the general consensus is that P4 schools are expected to spend between $12m and $15m on football in 2025-26, with championship caliber teams pushing up toward $17m.

By comparison, $8m today seems a bit low. I suspect the very best players did not report to the NCAA, or omitted some of their largest deals.

We can check this hypothesis with On3’s NIL valuation dataset.

According to On3, Kyron Drones has an NIL valuation of $295k (#276 among all college football players). If a good backup QB like Collin Schlee is worth $100k, that still leaves about $210k for Pop Watson and Davi Belfort, which is not possible if the median of total earnings is really $2,818.

So, not only do some top deals and players appear to be missing from the NCAA data set, but some other players (notably second and third stringers) appear to be missing as well.

In comparison to the NCAA data, the On 3 data set is much stronger. Still, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Do you really believe that Shadeur Sanders is worth $4.4m more than Drones?

Yeah, me neither.

Taking the NCAA and On3’s imperfect datasets and marrying them with some logic, we could approximate NIL payments to Virginia Tech quarterbacks as follows:

1. Drones - $500k

2. Schlee - $125k

3. Watson - $75k

4. Balfort - $10k

Of course, these are just estimations, but at least they are grounded in data.

Somewhat surprisingly, Drones is only the #4 ranked Virginia Techfootball player according to On3’s NIL Valuation. The top 3 are:

1. Dorian Strong - $471k

2. Antwaun Powell-Ryland - $374k

3. Aeneas Peebles - $331k

Number 5, one spot below Drones, is true freshman quarterback Davi Belfort at $206k. And since you’re undoubtedly wondering how that could be, I will note that he has something that the experienced star players above him on the list do not: a real social media presence. According to On3, Balfort is active on three important social media sites:

• Instagram - 136k followers

• Tic Toc - 6k

• X - 11k

Balfort’s 154k combined followers is nearly 10x more than Drones’s 16k. So, even though Balfort will likely get little to no NIL money directly from Virginia Tech this year, his potential as an influencer gives him significant value in the private market.

The new business environment

All of these developments are steps in the right direction. Data sets like those maintained by the NCAA and On3 are acceptable bridges to a future in which agents will have sufficient data on their own to advise players.

Allowing in-house, direct payments to players is also important because it gives coaches full control and opens up a secondary private market where hotshot young players can make significant money even if their in-house earnings are more limited.

Finally, the new framework is much more business friendly, allowing the big bucks to flow and removing pressure from individual donors, who have been a primary revenue driver for collectives in recent years.

Deals like the one announced recently between the University of Tennessee and Pilot set a nice template that Virginia Tech is likely to follow.

Count me in favor of any deal that preserves the stadium and field name, brings in millions of dollars in revenue, and is not dependent on alumni and fans. Because, the reality is that player earnings could skyrocket in the next few years, as we are nowhere near market equilibrium. And the ACC’s media grant of rights is the gift that will keep on not giving.

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The framework aides strategists in evaluating competition within a given industry.

For those not familiar with the 5 Forces Framework, I highly recommend watching this 13-minute video in which Porter lays out the basic framework and its utility in forming and examining competitive strategy.

The five forces that Porter identifies apply to all industries, but other forces can impact specific industries.

Similar to the healthcare industry, where I first encountered Porter’s 5 forces, governance bodies and payors are competitive forces in major college football. Another unique force in college football comes from dependents - non-revenue sports - that compete for financial resources generated by the football program.

The football program is, in practice, the most financially profitable service line within the athletic department. At this service line level, success, a proxy measured in wins and championships, drives the financial performance of the athletic department and all its attendant partners and vendors.

And just to be clear, whenever I say college football, I’m talking about FBS, where teams compete at the highest level of college football and must abide by the 85-scholarship limit.

Michael Porter’s original 5 forces

To help convey just how unique (screwed up?) college football is, as an industry, I am going to separate Porter’s five original forces from three forces unique to college football.

Competition in the Industry - high

Virginia Tech is in the business of generating wins on the football field. So are more than 130 other teams nationwide, and four in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In both the national and the local markets, competition is incredibly intense. Games often come down to a handful of plays, an inch here or there. The financial implications on programs, athletic departments, and entire regions of the country is massive. Teams will do anything to get a leg up on the competition (see: Stalions, Connor).

Threat of New Entrants - low

The FBS ranks continue to grow, with a trickle of new schools rising to the highest level of the sport each year. Still, the power those teams exert is low. A case in point is James Madison. The Dukes went a 11-1 in 2023, and even hosted College Gameday. However, in its one game against an ACC foe, JMU beat a bad Virginia team 36-35. As a G5 team, the Dukes are not an immediate threat to Virginia Tech. In fact, if the barriers to enter FBS are high, then the barriers to enter the P5 are nearly impenetrable. And P5 membership is what separates national title contenders from everyone else.

Bargaining Power Suppliers (Players) - high

The power that players exert in the industry has risen with the advent of NIL and the relaxation of transfer rules. Yes, many top players previously received under the table payments, but now everyone is eligible. Have a good long snapper that you don’t want to lose - gotta pay him! And competition for high school recruits has increased exponentially in the last 20 years, with the internet and private scouting services ensuring that great players seldom fly under the radar.

Bargaining Power of Consumers (Fans) - medium

Fans are incredibly powerful in college football - more so than in any other revenue generating sport, college or pro. They are the source of almost all the sport’s revenue. There are no independently wealth team owners in college football. Rather, fans serve as investors. The money they donate - to the university, the athletic department, and NIL collectives - and put toward ticket purchases, as well as the time they spend watching games on television, produces a quantifiable return on investment: wins and championships. The only reason consumer bargaining power is medium is that all the leverage is indirect. Therefore, any major shifts in buying, viewing, or donating trends take a while to work their way through the system. Even if a major booster drops a $100 million check into a NIL collective’s coffers, it will still take time to figure out how to spend the money and to operationalize those plans. And all that is dependent on the talent of others.

Threat of Substitutes - low

There are lots of other sports that compete during the same fall to winter stretch in which college football games are played, but interest in college football continues to grow, year after year. The real threat is that prospective football players switch sports as children, perhaps due to concerns about the physical toll football can take on the body (and especially the mind). Any impact on the game from kids making this choice would impact Division III schools first, then work its way up the ladder. FBS is pretty well insulated.

Additional forces unique to college football

As I mentioned at the top, there are additional competitive forces in college football, beyond what many industries include. Healthcare comes closest, but the demands of Title IX make college football totally unique.

Bargaining Power of Payors - high

The University - in Virginia Tech’s case, see the impact of the Football Enhancement Fund, both before and after it was announced.

NIL Collectives - well run and financed collectives are worth their weight in gold. They are the college football equivalent to Super PACs (political action committees).

Television - The P5 will officially become the P4 at the end of the academic year. However. with each passing year, that will become an in-name-only deal. The SEC and Big Ten media rights deals are so much better than what the ACC and Big 12 have that they threaten the very foundation of modern college football.

Legislative and Sanctioning Power of Governance Bodies - medium

Federal Government - the big lever the feds could pull would be around labor law, namely passing legislation that explicitly would make players employees of the university, which would completely upend the current model.

State Government - if Ron DeSantis and Florida St. follow through on threats to sue the CFP and possibly ESPN, it could reveal very uncomfortable information, the knowledge of which would force a restructuring within the game. It could also provide a roadmap for future state intervention on behalf of a school.

NCAA - the major governing body of the sport is growing increasingly powerless to shape the competitive landscape. However, its rules do still impact conduct, and penalties can, at times, be very serious (Penn St., in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky revelations, comes to mind).

ACC - conferences are the least powerful of the governance bodies from a policing standpoint, but the most powerful in terms of financial impact because they negotiate media rights deals.

Bargaining Power of Dependents - medium

Non-revenue sports (Title IX) - unique to the American system of sport is the impact of Title IX, which mandates equal numbers of athletic scholarships for men and women. Football underwrites all non-revenue generating teams, which in most cases is every team except for men’s basketball (which usually breaks even, give or take). Beyond scholarships, there is travel and general day-to-day expenses, including for facilities, which ticket sales rarely cover. Thus, each football team is limited by the number of other intercollegiate sports offered by the university, and the degree to which the athletic department seeks to be competitive in those sports.

This is key. While the impact of non-revenue sports on the football team is generally consistent over time, priorities can change with new leadership regimes. At Virginia Tech, former Athletic Director Jim Weaver famously funded the football team at a high level while neglecting just about every other team at the school. That changed with the arrival of Whit Babcock. Now Virginia Tech is invested in winning championships in nearly every sport in which it competes. And that takes money, which could otherwise be reinvested in the football team.

The football coach as CEO

FBS coaches command astronomical salaries, often well above their professional counterparts, due to the size of the operation they manage. At the same time, never before have coaches yielded less power.

This inverse relationship between coaching power and salaries reflects the modern reality of running a football program.

More available money provides new routes to program improvement, but veto points abound. Indeed, they can originate from:

• Fans

• Media

• Boosters

• NIL Collectives

• NCAA

• University Administration

• High School Coaches

• Former Players

That is a lot of constituencies to nurture and keep aligned. It is in this space where Brent Pry’s star has shone brightest, especially after he stepped back from on-field defensive coaching.

Still, these veto points, behind which lie fiefdoms in their own right, do not operate in a vacuum. Failures in one arena can quickly lead to contagion, as Justin Fuente discovered.

Therefore, as you monitor the moves Virginia Tech makes in the coming week, publicly via the transfer portal (which has a behind the scenes NIL component), coaching and staff changes, and high school recruiting, keep in mind where the power lies and how that is likely to affect the interplay between the competitive forces that impact the program.

Early data suggest that NIL is associated with less players declaring for the draft early.

While that may be true in the aggregate, each decision is unique. However, the framework I employ below would, I suspect, cover about 90% of the considerations most players weigh before making their decision on whether or not to declare early for the NFL Draft.

To see how that decision process might play out, in addition to illuminating the precise role NIL now plays, I will present two Virginia Tech case studies. The first is for Darren Evans, who declared for the 2011 draft, while the second is a hypothetical for Bhayshul Tuten who, at this point, appears the most likely candidate for early entry.

Case Studies

Out of all the positions on the field, running backs face some of the greatest wear and tear. From a starring position 20 years ago to more of a plug-and-play deal now, value has dropped for those who carry the ball for a living. To understand the role NIL is playing in decisions to go pro early, I thought it would be helpful to go through two case studies. One (Darren Evans) is real, and one (Bhayshul Tuten) is hypothetical, though based on real information.

DARREN EVANS

Running Back, Declared for the 2011 NFL Draft following his R-JR season

Darren Evans elected to forego his final year of eligibility to enter the 2011 NFL Draft after leading the ACC Champion 2010 squad in rushing. He told reporters he expected to be drafted in the third or fourth round, but he went undrafted. Evans signed with the Colts as an undrafted free agent and hung around with the team for a season, seeing little action. Evans played in only three games as a pro.

Decision Analysis

Regardless of what Evans had been told, he was always, realistically, just a late round option. In terms of quantitative factors, Evans, at best, was looking at a moderate signing bonus with nothing else guaranteed. He was an out-of-state kid, so the value of his scholarship was high, but he was on-pace to graduate in the spring of 2011, so taking some graduate classes for a semester didn’t offer much additional value. Injuries were certainly a concern, as he missed the entire 2008 season with a knee injury. Injury insurance was available at the time, but it was generally of the Loss of Value (LOV) variety back then, so it could not be counted on to the extent that it can be now. When he announced, Evans had not signed with an agent, and it is uncertain to what extent he was aware of the financial commitment required.

On the qualitative side, Evans’s considerations were as follows:

• Injury Risk: High (missed 2008 with a knee injury)

• Legacy: Low (he held the single game rushing record, but was not in line to secure any other major record)

• Family: High (he was a married father of a young child)

• Brotherhood: Low (no special connection to his recruiting class, 2010 was the seventh straight 10-win season)

• Brand: Low (no off-field issues, his image was fine)

• Love for the University and College Life: Low (he wanted to make money to support his family)

Had NIL existed in 2011, Evans would have likely returned for his R-SR season. The Hokies were expected to be good again in 2011 and, while he could expect to share carries with David Wilson, that would mean less wear and tear on his body. In that case, Virginia Tech would have returned one of the best backfields in the nation, and media attention would have been high.

The 2011 offensive line featured four seniors, and Jarrett Boykin and Danny Coale were the starters out wide, so one could reasonably expect a lot of running lanes. Ultimately, Evans wanted to support his family, and a decent NIL deal would have likely sufficed, given the uncertainty around his draft status and potential to improve it.

Bhayshul Tuten

Running Back, JR in 2023

Bhayshul Tuten transferred to Virginia Tech after rushing for 1,363 yards at North Carolina A&T in 2022. Like Evans, who was coming back from a major injury in 2010, Tuten enters the 2023 season as a bit of an unknown. Hokie fans didn’t even see much of him at the spring game, which was dominated by Bryce Duke and Chance Black.

At 5’11”, 200 lbs., Tuten is a bit on the small side for an every down back in the NFL, but if he can match last year’s rushing total at the P5 level, he will certainly draw the attention of draft scouts as a possible Day 3 selection.

Decision Analysis

Tuten has not had a major injury in college, but injuries are always a concern for running backs, especially small ones. Unlike Evans, Tuten would have access to a Critical Injury (CI) rider on a potential Permanent Disability insurance policy, so if he were to return to Virginia Tech for his senior season, his financial picture would be much clearer in the event of a serious injury.

Tuten is from New Jersey, so his (out-of-state) scholarship holds significant value. In addition, as a transfer entering his third academic year, it is unlikely that Tuten would be able to earn his Bachelor’s degree by the end of the 2023-24 academic year, especially considering that declaring early would likely mean foregoing classes during the spring semester.

Finally, given the larger football staff in 2023, and potential counseling through Triumph NIL, one can safely assume that Tuten will be well versed in the cost side of hiring an agent, tax considerations, etc.

On the qualitative side, Tuten’s considerations are as follows:

• Injury Risk: Medium (solely position-based)

• Legacy: Low (it is unlikely he will contend for any major VT record or accolade above an All-ACC team)

• Family: Low (nothing public, although this could always change)

• Brotherhood: Low (as a transfer, he does not have a connection with any particular recruiting class)

• Brand: Low (nothing to rehab in his personal brand)

• Love for the University and College Life: Low (he is new to Virginia Tech)

On paper, Tuten, if he were to have a strong 2023 season, could face a decision similar to the one Evans did following the 2010 campaign. There are a lot of similarities between the two players, but some key differences in the broader environment, and drilling down on actual numbers will illuminate NIL’s role in all of this.

Let’s do some math!

I’m going to continue to consider the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the Go/Stay decision separately. These numbers will be tied loosely to the Bhayshul Tuten case study detailed above. For the purposes of this exercise, we will assume Tuten will be the first pick of the sixth round. I’ll be using the 2023 NFL contract numbers, but they will be similar to next year’s. For tax purposes, I am assuming Tuten will be single, childless, renting-not-owning, and living in Virginia, or a state with a similar tax burden.

Quantitative: Rookie contract

Four-year contract value (not guaranteed): $3,840,000, or $960,000 per year on average; Year 1 Cap: $804,576

Signing bonus (guaranteed): $218,304

Odds of making the opening day roster:

• Year 1 - 70.2%

• Year 2 - 57.5%

• Year 3 - 35.3%

• Year 4 - 20.9%

Average NFL career length: 3.3 years

Minimum Year 1 take home pay (after agent fee and taxes)

= Signing bonus - (taxes + agent fee)

= approximately $109,152

Maximum Year 1 take home pay

= Signing bonus take home + [Year 1 Cap * (1 - (tax rate + agent rate))]

= $109,152 + [$804,578 (1 - (0.45 + .03))]

= $109,152 + ($804,578 * 0.52)

= $109,152 + $418,381

= $527,533

Expected Year 1 take home pay

= Signing bonus take home + (Year 1 take home * odds of staying on an active roster for the full year)

= $109,152 + ($418,381 * 0.64)

= $109,152 + $267,764

= $376,916

Maximum take home pay for average career (3.3 years)

= Signing bonus take home + [3.3 (Avg Salary * (1-Tax and Agent Fee Rate))]

= $109,152 + [3.3 ($960,000 * 0.52)]

= $109,152 + $1,647,360

= $1,756,512

Lifetime value of a Bachelor’s degree = $900,000

Overall, if he were to go pro and get drafted early in the sixth round, Tuten would likely be looking at take home earnings north of $350,000 for the 2024-25 season. However, he would face multiple risks:

• Anyone expected to get drafted on Day 3 could just as easily go undrafted

• He is one major knee injury in the preseason away from netting out less than $200K, at which point he would be lucky to hang around on some team’s practice squad for a year or so following his recovery

• If he were to flame out quickly, returning to Virginia Tech to complete his degree would likely cost around $100K (two years of out-of-state tuition and fees, unless he established residency in Virginia); if he did not complete his degree, he would be lucky to get a job that paid $20 per hour

Qualitative: The yearning to go pro

There are a lot of ways one can measure the qualitative factors. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use the following system:

• Go Pro = -1 (the player’s situation indicates going pro is the best option)

• No Opinion = 0 (the player’s situation does not point in either direction)

• Stay in School = 1 (the player’s situation indicates returning for another year is the optimal decision)

You have probably already noticed that I left out perhaps the two most significant qualitative factors, namely the opportunity to achieve a lifelong dream (playing in the NFL) and the possibility of improving one’s draft position (by returning to school). I left them out because they both apply in every situation and they cancel one another out.

Preamble aside, let’s look at where Tuten stands on the qualitative factors:

• Injury Risk = 0 (no injury history, but a bit on the small side for the NFL)

• Legacy = -1 (unlikely to break any major records if he were to return)

• Family = 0 (no public indications of their preference or special considerations)

• Brotherhood = -1 (he transferred in and does not have a tight historical connection with anyone on the roster

• Brand = -1 (no off the field issues to clean up, little upside if he were to return)

• Love for the University and the College Life = -1 (I haven’t seen anything in the media about how his deep love for tubing on the New River in July and the fulfillment he gets each time he visits TOTS are worth more than money can buy)

Tuten’s overall qualitative score sums to -4, which clearly points to going pro. Given the neutral quantitative picture painted above, the qualitative score would likely be enough to send him packing for the NFL after the 2023 season were there no way to make money in college.

Enter NIL

Although, absent NIL, it would make sense for Bhayshul Tutem to go pro after the 2023 season, such a decision is far from a no brainer. Since Tuten would have one more year of eligibility remaining, and likely closer to two years of classes required to graduate, returning to Tech for his senior season would be worth around $1 million over the course of his life ($900K for the Bachelor’s degree and around $100K for cost of attendance covered by his scholarship). Unfortunately, those are both long-term benefits, while NFL earnings come in the present. In Tuten’s case, that would be the main reason to go.

That is where NIL comes in. Let’s suppose that he had an offer from Triumph NIL that would net him $75k per year after taxes, which seems reasonable based on a recent TSL article by Chris Coleman. Considering how many costs are covered by his scholarship and how little responsibility he has at this point in his life, he could live quite comfortably in Blacksburg while completing his degree and potentially raising his draft stock. Injury insurance, combined with a comparatively low maximum career take home pay for an average length career of $1.8m, means that the delta between the CI reimbursement and what he could have actually made in the NFL had there been no injury is comparatively small.

Looking back at Darren Evans, he too likely would have returned for the 2011 season had NIL existed at the time. He surely would have netted an NIL deal large enough to support his family. Yes, he would have split time with David Wilson, but don’t forget that Evans was the team’s leading rusher in 2010 while sharing a crowded backfield with Wilson, Ryan Williams, and the ever elusive Tyrod Taylor. And who knows, one more year might have been the difference in his getting drafted and enjoying a longer, and more lucrative, NFL career.

Regarding NIL’s potential macro impact, as the case studies in this article posit, I think the greatest impact will be on guys who receive a Day 3 draft grade. What we know about current NIL deals suggests that in many cases they will be a sufficient counter-incentive to keep the player in school for an extra year, if not two.

For Day 1 caliber players, declaring early is still a no brainer, and in most cases, the same will hold true for guys with a Day 2 grade. However, at schools with well-funded NIL collectives, we could see a lot more great-but-not-sure-thing-at-the-next-level players deciding to exhaust their eligibility before for leaving for the NFL.

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• Rookie Contract

• College Scholarship

• Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees

• Injury Insurance

• Agent

In addition, I will include a section on qualitative considerations, such as: Injury Risk, Legacy, Family, Brotherhood, Brand, and Love for the University and College Life.

Finally, I will explain where NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness - i.e., the legal structure for players making money outside of the university based on their sporting achievements at the university) fits in all this.

Quantitative Factors

As already noted, there are five key quantitative factors, each entailing its own costs and benefits. I will address each in detail in order to provide sufficient contextual understanding for the Go/Stay formula.

Rookie Contract

Contract value varies significantly in the early rounds, but there is little difference between where in a round players are taken on the third day of the draft (i.e., the first pick of the sixth round does not make much more money than the last pick of the sixth round).

The entire value of the contract is guaranteed for first round draft picks and, as the graph shows, it really pays to be a first round pick. Second rounders also do quite well, but after that, the money declines sharply. All contracts are for four years, but only the best players make it, uninterrupted, to the end of their rookie contract.

A significant number of late round picks will be cut before the end of training camp. For players chosen in rounds 2-6, only the signing bonus is guaranteed, and it can either be paid out all at once or in a series of payments over time. Once again, all the big money is in the first round.

Another key point on signing bonuses is that they are taxed at the marginal rate. For an unmarried, late round draft pick who gets cut during camp in August and does not catch on anywhere else, that rate would most likely be 35%. Throw in another 5% for the vast majority who pay state income taxes, plus Social Security and Medicaid contributions, and one can safely assume about half of the signing bonus would go to Uncle Sam, in some form or fashion.

College Scholarship

A full Virginia Tech athletic scholarship is valued at approximately $35,750 for in-state players and $57,250 for out-of-state players who live on campus. That amount is lower for the many players who live off-campus ($33,440 and $54,940, respectively). Cost of Attendance payments, allowed only in recent years by the NCAA, help defray the indirect costs of education and gaps in meal plans.

Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees

With so much in the way of academic assistance (tutors, guidance counselors, etc.) and players often entering school in January of what should be their senior year of high school and then staying on campus year round, it has become fairly common for major college athletes to complete their Bachelor’s degree in under four years. So, in many cases, players considering leaving school with remaining eligibility are doing so with one degree already in hand. As such, it is appropriate to consider the value of both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Nothing precludes a player who leaves early for the NFL from returning to school and completing his degree, and even attending graduate school (see: Dr. Shaquille O’Neal, Ed.D.). However, guys who leave early and get chosen on the third day, who then flame out quickly, are unlikely to have the financial means to return to school.

Injury Insurance

Many athletes with professional potential who choose to return to school once they are eligible to go pro opt to purchase injury insurance. These days, that usually means adding a Critical Injury (CI) provision to a Permanent Disability (PDB) policy. As described in a recent Sportico article, these policies work as such:

Although often mischaracterized as standalone policies, CI and LOV [Loss of Value] are, in fact, riders that can be added to underlying Permanent Total Disability (PTD) policies. To obtain the extra CI or LOV coverage, an athlete first has to qualify for PTD; for collegiate consumers, that means the athlete must be viewed by an insurance company as a legitimate risk for the professional leagues.

Typical critical injury provisions define two categories of bodily harm on which the policy holder can cash in. Category 1 injuries—which, for college athletes, typically pays out $250,000—include high-grade ligament tears, torn rotator cuffs and heart attacks. For “Cat 1” tears, reconstructive surgery within a certain period of time is required for the policy holder to receive the benefit. Category 2 injuries, which usually come with a $100,000 benefit, are mostly muscular injuries, such as torn triceps or pecs. One current underwriter has a third category, paying up to $50,000 benefits, for injuries such as herniated discs.

Unlike LOV, critical injury does not stipulate that the athlete’s future career be harmed in order to receive a payout. In fact, while many of the listed injuries are serious, athletes can reasonably be recovered and ready to play before the start of the next season.

While there are variations to the cost of the coverage based on an athlete’s sport and pro potential, annual premiums for total disability policies with critical injury provisions will usually run a college athlete between $18,000 to $25,000. The bulk of that expense is from the riders, with the underlying PTD costing between $5,000 and $9,000 annually for $1 million of coverage.

It is important to note that CI riders are pretty cut and dry - you get hurt, you get paid, so athletes do not have to worry about the possibility of the insurance company refusing to pay based on a technicality.

Agent

The NFL limits agent commissions to 3% of a player’s salary, and good agents can provide rookie players a lot of value. One estimate puts that value at $15k to $25k per rookie. And, unlike injury insurance, the player is guaranteed to reap the benefit of having an agent. Still, an agent is one more cost to factor in, as all but a few players will require professional representation.

Qualitative Factors

Like usual, the qualitative factors are difficult to assess and subjective in nature. In general, one can think of them as such:

Injury Risk

This one is undoubtedly the primary qualitative factor that drives early entry to the draft. Even with injury insurance, players are unlikely to recoup the full value of what they could have made in the NFL, sans injury. For certain positions, like running back, that have especially high wear and tear rates, the injury risk does not end with that final college season, but extends into the pro career due to the “extra miles” on that player’s body.

Legacy

Players who are on the verge of breaking major records and/or are contenders for the Heisman Trophy may give such individual legacy achievements weight in the Go/Stay decision. Likewise, if the player’s team looks like a conference or national title contender, that possibility may also factor into the decision.

Family

Most players not named John Elway or Eli Manning have little sway over which team takes them in the draft and, therefore, which city they end up in. One can imagine an in-state player with a sick loved one who would prefer the certain proximity in college to the geographic uncertainty of the NFL.

Brotherhood

Some teams have groups of recruits who came in together in a key signing class. These guys all know each other well, having competed against one another ever since their earliest Pop Warner days. This brotherhood bond can sometimes keep the best players at the university past when individual calculations suggest they should go pro.

Brand

How many times have we seen elite college players make poor life decisions, especially early on in their college careers? The Oakland Raiders, under Al Davis, were famous for taking guys with great measurables while looking the other way on off-the-field incidents. It was almost part of their brand. But that is just one team out of 31, and Al Davis passed away years ago. For many players, an extra year of personal branding, including the development of leadership characteristics valued in the NFL, is a major consideration. A comeback story is almost always preferable to the dreaded “questionable character” label that follows too many guys to the NFL.

Love for the University and College Life

Finally, some guys just love being in college, or being at their specific college. A case in point would be former USC quarterback and current Fox Sports Analyst Matt Leinart. He returned for his fifth season at USC for many reasons, but one of them was that he liked living in L.A., dating famous people, taking Ballroom Dancing (because he already had earned his Bachelor’s degree and had little interest in a Master’s), and being a responsibility-free college student. It was a one-time opportunity and Leinart took it. More power to him!

The X-Factor: NIL

NIL gets a lot of attention because it involves putting money in players’ pockets. There are whispers about massive deals, and some of them are even true. However, NIL is about more than direct payments. In the qualitative realm, NIL can also play a major role in personal branding, which can increase a player’s current and future earning potential, both in the game and away from the field.

Through The Hokie Way, which facilitates charitable activities, Virginia Tech players have opportunities to cement their legacy in the community and build their personal brand. Engaging in such efforts also positions players for future professional and non-professional opportunities with the university.

The common thread in NIL is networking. By meeting people and engaging in business or charitable ventures, players develop a personal network that they can leverage down the road, regardless of what they do in the NFL.

Next Week

In Part 2 of this series, I will present a formula for how players, either implicitly or explicitly, approach the Go/Stay decision. Using former Hokie players as case studies and current players as hypotheticals, I will attempt to shed some light on the role NIL plays in convincing some guys to forego early entry into the draft. Finally, I will try to give readers a sense of the NIL earning potential necessary to keep each type of player (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3) in school for the duration of their eligibility.

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