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Ranking the NIL Collectives

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
There has been a lot of discussion over NIL being the problem with getting Jaden Rashada on campus. Setting personal thoughts on NIL aside, NIL is going to dominate discussion for quite some time and it is important to get certain facts straight. Here is how On3 ranks the NIL collectives:
  1. Tennessee (Spyre Sports Group)
  2. Miami (John Ruiz LLC)
  3. Texas A&M (The Fund)
  4. Oregon (Division Street)
  5. Florida (Gator Collective) (assume Gator Guard is included)
  6. USC (BLVD LLC)
  7. Ohio State (The Foundation)
  8. Texas Tech (Matador Club)
  9. Texas (Clark Field Collective)
  10. Alabama (High Tide Traditions)
  11. Georgia (Classic City Collective)
  12. Michigan (Champions Circle)
  13. Michigan State (East Lansing NIL Club)
  14. Indiana (Hoosier for Good)
  15. Kentucky (Athlete Advantage)
Sports Illustrated has a completely different ranking that puts just the Gator Guard at #8. There are major differences among the collectives that make it hard to compare apples to oranges. For example, John Ruiz is basically the entire NIL collective for Miami. He can choose where to put his money. I would actually count him as a booster instead of an NIL collective because Miami does not have many facilities on campus to donate to, and as an individual DBA or LLC he can donate his money wherever he wants. In the Gator Collective, your $10 donation gets spread among all 21 varsity sports teams. In the Gator Guard, that $5M donation also gets spread among all 21 varsity sports. When Bill Heavener writes a $15M check to UF for a building, he gets his name on the building and none of that goes to the athletes for NIL. With John Ruiz can direct all $10M to 100 players, one player, two buildings or any combination thereof.

The point here is that Florida's problem is not just NIL--it is our desire as poor sports fans to demand that millionaire boosters focus their donations solely on NIL as a way to get top talent on campus while only paying $10 a month for the Gator Collective (not counting the donations tacked onto season tickets, etc).
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Moderator
Our NIL "thing" is neither cohesive nor unified in its support at the top. We may not LIKE where CFB is headed, but this is how things are NOW, and if we want to give this Coach and his staff the full opportunity to rebuild this program, they MUST be given the full support necessary to "acquire talent"!
Clearly, that broke down here.
I'm not going to comment on the details that are flying around right now (I mean, $13 mil??? For a 17 yr old high school "4.5-Star" QB? I sure hope THAT'S a bs exageration...)
At the moment, I cannot take this "NIL ranking" seriously. For OUR part, I wanna see us at least move PAST this Rashada fiasco, one way or another (personally, I think he's gone, and we are left to pick up the pieces...and though I don't know enough to blame ANYONE in particular for this mess, there IS a growing feeling that there might well be a PRIMA DONNA effect at work somewhere somehow with "Team Rashada", and maybe we don't NEED the whole ongoing parade, at this point--never did?).
Have to assume there is a scramble ongoing behind the scenes here at UF to now "FIX" what we didn't know was "broken" in the first place!
A "good" recruiting class could have been significantly better, and now we begin to see how and why--and the damage done by all THIS could reverberate and damage us into NEXT YEAR'S as well! Our boosters and "higher ups" in the administration have let the Coach and his staff, the whole damn PROGRAM DOWN! (Billy must be pissed--frustrated and PISSED). Frankly, it looks as if they have broken trust, however inadvertently. Made his job all the harder.
I supported "name, image, likeness" as a way to make sure these players shared in some of the riches being earned by their effort and eventual stardom--it was SUPPOSED to be a way of doing so WITHOUT descending into "pay for play"...but now it's clearly turning into some version of that anyway. We really ARE in danger of allowing our alma maters to become reduced to pawns in the "NFL Developmental League"!
 

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
I think we are misplacing the blame. The University of Florida has great support up top from the university president to the athletic director to the 21 varsity coaches. To blame “the top” is wrong. The “problem” is that millionaire boosters can put their money wherever they want and they choose to put it directly into infrastructure where they get maximum tax write-off, maximum return on investment, and maximum control over the allocation of money.

How are Scott Stricklin, Billy Napier, and all 21 varsity coaches supposed to convince Bill Heavener to stop paying $15M for buildings like the Heaver Football Complex and instead pay $15M for 17-year old kids to play football? That is exactly what is happening. It is not pay-for-play, but it is control over the investment. What is a better value, a $15M building with your name on it or a 17-year old kid who might not pan out? If you honestly think all 545,000 alumni are paying $1k a year for NIL you are crazy. If you honestly think all 50,000 UF alumni association members are paying $10k a year for NIL you are crazy.

What is the solution? UF needs to find a legal contract vehicle for diverting direct booster funds through the collective. Florida law could be fixed to make that easier, but the boosters still need an incentive to write that $15M check to the collective instead of the UF board of trustees (or board of governors… I forget the actual term).
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Moderator
I'M not thinking or SAYING anything of the sort. Perhaps it wasn't aimed at me, per se, but if so it strikes me as ridiculous to find myself even having to answer such a charge: There is only you and I commenting on it here, after all, and I neither said nor implied ANYTHING LIKE what you have argued against above. In fact, I understand and agree with most of what you say--if am a little less trusting of the aims of all involved.
Of COURSE neither the coaching staff nor the administrative executive at UF are to blame for this. But in this particular instance it appears that there was at least "confusion" among the disparate group of individuals supposedly "running" our NIL program in "organized and responsible fashion" (and yes, there is much back-channel, off-the-record hand-wringing concerning certain individuals having over-stepped their actual authority there, not to mention an ongoing "he said/she said" disagreement concerning who promised what, misunderstood or misrepresented what kind of numbers WHEN, etc...).
There is still much of all this that remains unclear, and may well remain so no matter HOW this Rashada thing is resolved. At this point, though, it is hard to imagine it ends well for us, anyway.
Like a lot of us who just love our Gators and have long loved college football, at a certain point I don't CARE about the rarified financial details involved. I'd hoped to see a more level playing field somehow--but I'm not naive. There will have to be SOME (albeit belated) effort here to rein this all in--but as others have already noted, the NCAA SHOULD have foreseen and gotten out ahead of all this maybe ten YEARS ago, rather than just waking up to it now--but THEY were too busy rolling in the huge TV money suddenly flooding their members' coffers to even consider sharing it with the kids who were laying the golden eggs...and if we are waiting for and counting on CONGRESS to somehow fix this, we are in even worse shape than we thought!
Yesterday's comments by Gator Dave on Gator Breakdown I think well-express how a lot of us gage and feel about the whole thing as it relates to us...It was bound to happen to SOMEBODY, not surprising in the least that it would be in Florida (especially that UM would somehow be involved in SOME way), but given all that, call it bad luck, poor planning, or whatever, DAMNIT, it hit us first.
I don't claim nor care to be an expert in the behind-the-scenes rules for and/or machinations required in order to run a proper NIL program, nor its wider, larger context in the cut throat recruiting process. Neither do I intend become one, even for a moment. I don't KNOW what the COACH and his staff will do to somehow deal with all the additional complication and complexity this current mess now adds to an already difficult road ahead.
All I really said about it here amounts to the one obvious truth: Someone messed up SOMEHOW, and here we are: The numbers seem out of wack--and it should NEVER have gone down THIS way no matter WHAT.
The rest is just supposition, frustration and reaction. If I have somehow further clouded the issue, I apologize; none of us are happy about this.
Billy himself characterized it all as "a talent acquisition game". We all know that is true--more so than ever. If we wanna get back to "Elite" status, find ourselves annually competing for National Championships, whatever the particular actual form that takes, we will need our whole program to be run efficiently with that end firmly in view. We NEEDED all that building, etc--we had begun to fall behind some of these OTHER "Top Programs" in that regard. But we must all now recognize that this "brave new world" of NIL, and its relationship to recruiting and the transport portal and everything else is ALSO part of the whole package...we were among the first to recognize that, but it seems we somehow fell behind there, and it bit us on the butt.
I, we, ALL of us just want to see the signs that our whole program is being competently run, everyone pulling together in coordinated fashion, so that this Coach and staff can build a program we can all be proud of, on its way to greatness.
Done right, the journey ITSELF is "the fun part"!
 

Escambia94

Aerospace Cubicle Engineer (ACE)
Moderator
@DRU2012 My comments are cross-posted among here, Reddit, and other forums and are not directed at you specifically unless I mention you.

On a related note, other forums are getting hammered for mentioning Gator Collective so you will not see these comments anywhere else because they are getting deleted.
 

DRU2012

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Moderator
@DRU2012 My comments are cross-posted among here, Reddit, and other forums and are not directed at you specifically unless I mention you.

On a related note, other forums are getting hammered for mentioning Gator Collective so you will not see these comments anywhere else because they are getting deleted.
In which case, I apologize for my error of misinterpretation, and support your attitude and actions in response.
For MY part, regarding this whole Rashada/NIL/NLI/Collective mess,
I am DONE with it.
At this point I am with those who say "It is time to move on!"...We still don't have much real information, but the little that's out there only reinforces the frustrating weight of all the rest in rumor and trolling that is dragging us down in an accelerating fashion.
ENOUGH! Unless the kid just disavows the controversy and comes in now, we need to simply let go--whatever that entails. Make sure we play things right with all the rest (more than ever including DJ Lagway for '24) as it seems so far we've otherwise managed to do, and just GET ON WITH IT. There is more I could say, so much more BEING said, but by now I'm with those who say let's just cut the whole package of misery loose!
 

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