An Analysis of Player Earnings as NIL Moves In-house
An Analysis of Player Earnings as NIL Moves In-house
Mining data from On3 and the NCAA to make some sense out of all the madness
Oh, the NCAA.
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:
Drones - $500k
Schlee - $125k
Watson - $75k
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:
Dorian Strong - $471k
Antwaun Powell-Ryland - $374k
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.