While multi-million dollar NIL deals for college football players may still feel unbelievable for fans, many have come to accept the new landscape of the sport.
Some of the requests made outside contracts and deals for name, image, and likeness by elite high school recruits may be harder to wrap their heads around.
Pete Nakos released a lengthy report on On3 Sports where they surveyed the anonymous opinions of several Power Four NIL Collective leaders and personnel staffers. They offered insight on the 2025 recruiting class with respect to the biggest NIL deals, the premium positions, and several crucial topics.
However, the intel that stood out most was the nearly unbelievable requests by the top high school recruits in this cycle with respect to amenities and deal sweeteners outside of a dollar amount.
Many of them said that nearly everyone wants a new car or a car lease, and that’s something that many college football stars are privy to in the NIL landscape. Some of the other asks that staffers divulged were a bit more ludicrous.
“I’ve had more crazy things asked than ever before,” one SEC NIL Collective member said. “Red carpet treatment, people wanting their families on chartered flights to home and away games, car service for the entire family to and from games and around town. Stuff that nobody is doing.”
Transporting family members to and from games appears to be reasonable, as another member of the Big Ten NIL Collective brought up the notion among recruits. It gets a bit more absurd when chartered flights and car services are thrown around, turning things into more of a show of entertainment than one of sport.
More and more recruits want to live in nice homes, condos, or apartments, but some are seeking more expensive accommodations.
“We’re talking cars, travel for the family, and private jet hours,” an ACC personnel staffer said. “We get a lot of guys asking for penthouse condos for $6,000 a month. Every guy thinks that they need to be bought a car. We had a high school kid ask us to buy the parents a house. And it was a $450,000 house.”
An apartment while the player is on the football team seems like a fair ask. A $6,000 monthly penthouse condo is berserk.
The requests for family housing, however, feel a bit more complex. It’s an uncomfortable landscape where teenagers inherit millions of dollars without any financial literacy education or protections. Predatory NIL agents circle rising prospects like vultures, and those with worse family situations are more vulnerable.
It’s a concerning precedent for players to utilize their NIL deals to purchase their family a home, as it puts a responsibility on student athletes that isn’t fair or just. So, perhaps there’s merit in setting up their families through deliberate housing requests to NIL Collectives.
However, it’s hard to swallow a world where high school recruits are receiving private jets and penthouse suites when they’re already privy to NIL opportunities that all generations who came before them were not allowed to receive.
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