Texas A&M put together the best recruiting class in college tackle football today, people are calling it historic, and maybe the most decorated class ever. It never occurred to me that there was anything more than Dumbo Fisher's recruiting nous and the lure of A&M going on.
I forgot NIL: name, image, likeness. Kids can now be paid for use of those of themselves. Nick Saban said to a group of prospective recruits (in Texas too) last year that Bryce Young had been paid $80,000 in NIL fees before ever playing a down for the "Crimson Tide."
Tellingly, Fisher has not denied using NIL deals to get recruits, he has questioned the amount, and has argued that kids were always paid, just not legally. Texas A&M generates more revenue than any other college football program in the nation, but the schools don't pay, businessmen and the schools' boosters pay.
This is a problem that the big-time football colleges and universities are going to have deal with the best they can. NIL payments are legal, the kids are entitled to them and the schools are not. But man do they tilt the competitive balance. The rich are going to get richer and the gap between them and the others is going to yawn. Just the way that it does in a market economy.
