Student athlete compensation

And from your viewpoint, because I know how I feel about it as a player.

But, like, how has media changed since the NIL and all of that? Because I was like...

From a player standpoint, looking at it from the inside, I guess it would be what? Inside looking in? It ain't really inside looking out.

Some of these guys are coming from making more money than they're going to make this year.

Because I know for when I was coming out, at least, like imagining the draft and imagining seeing your name roll across the bottom of the screen, that was like all the fuel you needed to be, oh, I'm going pro.

Now these kids are like thinking they're coming out of high school to be a professional.

Like, which I guess they are because you're going from a 17, 18-year-old high school kid to being a true freshman at Ohio State, and now you're on a million-dollar NIL deal.

Like, so I guess you are a professional technically.

very talented outstanding arm talent my other thought is hopefully he stays healthy because there's you know that looked like there were some issues on protecting him and you know I know one of those interceptions I mean he put the ball right on a dime and you know ball just gets tipped as receiver drops it and goes in the hands of the of the defender and then i think he got banged up uh on his ankle in the in the game as well i mean he threw one ball i think i said he was he was parallel to the ground i'm not sure how he threw it but about 50 or 60 yards in the air but uh very talented young uh both those both those players are are talented nico as well

Yeah, you saw Nico Iamaleava, who if maybe he's finally found a place where he can settle down and be a quarterback because we know what he, I should say what he went through, but also what he kind of allowed, I guess, with NIL and all of those things that maybe UCLA can be a little more relevant in the wins and losses column if he can settle in and be a healthy quarterback.

Well, I mean, listen, he took a team to the playoffs when he was at Tennessee.

And then I really think, I mean, partly the NIL.

I don't think it was NIL's fault.

I think it was an issue.

Probably he just wanted to go home.

But it does make me wonder a little bit the lore of Alabama under Kalen DeBoer.

So Ohio State just needs to continue to trust these guys and let them go out there and make plays, man.

It's just only going to help this roster because later on in the season, the more guys that you're playing, more guys that are making plays, the deeper that this roster is going to be, especially when we're in the NIL era, where that's going to be the knock on a lot of programs.

Not a lot of teams are going to be deep.

Not a lot of teams can afford the freshman class that Ohio State was able to generate.

And I don't want to see any of those programs go away.

And especially in this era in college sports with revenue sharing and NIL, and you've had discussions around the country about cutting sports.

Like if, if a game like this can help keep a tennis program alive somewhere or, or help, you know, keep people employed, like, like that's absolutely why these games are vital to, to these smaller schools.

But I, Otherwise, for them as a football team, it's not it's not helping those guys too much rather than just kind of like like humbling them in a sense and seeing how like the disparity of absolute talents like that's unfortunate.

And then you knew that you would get a Kentucky team that you would beat, what, 30 straight times, a Vanderbilt team that was not having players who were going to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony.

You knew that you would get more, quote unquote, cupcake conference games when that was happening.

Now the depth of the SEC in the NIL transfer portal era where everyone can get talented players, that makes that slate much more arduous.

Now, if I was going to vouch for Florida playing a marquee game every single year at the beginning of the year, I think it should be Miami.

So the house settlement happened in the summer, and they knew the limit for revenue sharing was going to be $20 million or so.

So they front-loaded NIL money before the summer, before the house settlement.

So a lot of those players, maybe they only had $15 or $60 million in that roster in the fall, but they had put – $10 million in it before and front loading.

So that gets you to 25 million, but, or maybe they put 15 or 18 million ahead of time.

And then they can roll that over to the next year.

Well, now you've got that money available in the spring.

Plus there's NIL money on top of the revenue sharing money.

So that's, I, I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to guess just knowing some of the individual prices on some of these players that the budgets, I would think it's at least 25 million.

was in the NFL with the Chargers, played at Sacred Heart University, South Jersey resident like myself.

And he's here to talk to us about the wild, wild west that is NIL.

We're going to hit on all things NIL.

Gordon Hill.

Gordon, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I appreciate you having me.

Yeah, I mean, I'm really excited for this conversation because, like I was telling Gordon before we went on, I've been getting kind of hit up right and left by people who have questions about NIL.

Got it.

Like NIL, you mean the college NIL.

Is that what you mean?

NIL, yeah.

I don't want to just pay for clinical hours.

I want to be able to say, hey, here's the base salary.

If you want to earn more, here are the opportunities.

And it really is NIL.

I know a lot of people have strong opinions

on NIL in general.

We've talked about this before.

I think it's good for the sport in general.

And then all of a sudden we're paying in the mid threes.

And wasn't that the gripe with Gundy that he wasn't going to pay players? Wasn't that like he wasn't keeping up with the times? Yeah,

Gundy didn't like NIL.

And I think they used that as a part of an excuse.

saying? Yeah.

Well, I tell you what, I wish the NIL was like it is for, for our college athletes in the broadcast business, but Hey, that's neither here nor there.

I'm just happy that we're in the middle of football season.

So I want to talk – look, there have been a lot of people giving their opinions and waxing about what they saw at the big house last Saturday.