I think all the B1G teams were paying guys in the pre-NIL days too. If I were to hazard a guess at now compared to say 2016, I’d guess the payscale is much less flat than it was.
Like in 2016 as a 4* LB Recruit, you were probably getting $20-50k a year depending on where you went. So the bigger factors were being close to home and path to the NFL.
Now that programs can either offer more up front or more definite paths to immediate cash, that becomes a much more important deciding factor in where to go play
I feel everyone is making way too big a deal out of one year. Georgia likely makes the championship with Beck (and still should have won without him - just bad TO luck, some horrible drops, and then ND gets a return TD). UT could easily have beaten OSU - particularly if they just played Arch.
Of course, if this wasn’t just an unlucky down year for Bama but the end of an era, that could shift power quite a bit.
I could be completely wrong on this, but my sense is that lots/most of grads from Southern state schools stay in the area, whereas ND/UM grads move on. So in pre-NIL days, when you needed to bribe a kid with a “job” at a car dealership, etc. it was easier to find a local shady alum in the South than it was in Ann Arbor, South Bend, etc.
Beck is terrible and wouldn’t have made a difference, UGA was way down this year compared to any other Smart year, barely beating 1-7 UK and should have lost to a middle of the pack ACC team in GT.
The main reason the Bama era ended and Saban retired is because of NIL/transfer portal. This was not just a one-off down year for Bama, they were clearly on the downtrend even before Saban retired, missing the playoffs in 2023 and losing to a non-Oh st B1G team in Saban’s last year which would have been unthinkable pre-NIL.
SEC is still going to be a top 1-2 conference moving forward but NIL has clearly leveled the playing field between them and everybody else.
yeah transfer portal was huge, if a 5* goes to Bama and rides the bench his entire first season he will just transfer to another P5 school where he will get playing time since he doesn’t have to sit out a year. Makes it a lot harder for the UGAs and Bama’s to reload every year and increases the year-to-year variance for the top programs.
yeah seems like the academic schools like ND, UM, UT are benefitting the most from NIL rules. Probably has something to do with the academic schools also having the most money, but could also be bc the academic requirements to get in to those schools are not as much of a hinderance anymore since recruiting HS players is not nearly as important .
Yeah some combo of NIL and Transfer Portal just means fewer top guys are going to the top few schools out of HS and when they get there they’re more likely to leave.
At some point it’s just a numbers game, and it’s a lot easier to field an elite DL if you’re choosing your 4 best from 15 elite recruits than choosing your 4 best from 10 elite recruits.
This stuff happens to basically all teams that people think are historically elite. Then the sport had like 3 seasons where it didn’t, and everyone just goldfished that it had ever been different. And now that 3 year fluke is over, and people think this is new instead of something that’s always been there
yeah they lost to Michigan and it wasn’t even an upset. Saban staying would have slowed down the decline, like they wouldn’t have lost to Vandy this year, but the run of dominance was over because of NIL regardless of Saban staying or retiring.
