SI article on Michigan NIL

Great summary, thanks for sharing. 

transformational, not transactional

-JH

Corum owns a real estate portfolio? Wow.

This can’t be true. All I’ve heard is that our NIL is completely broken, we aren’t competitive and we’ll be lucky if we aren’t a D-III school soon. 

I've been interested to see how other, non-headliners do in this system. Per a quote from Trevor Keegan in the story, he expects to make between $225k and $500k this year. Amazing.

I thought that was an informative article, though it was certainly more optimistic of Michigan's NIL than I believe most of us are. There is the claim that Michigan's cautious approach to NIL has led to their cohesion and success, in contrast to a Texas A&M who bought a bunch of highly rated players up front. That's certainly evidence, but I would be hesitant to say there's any causal relationship there.

The talk about players elsewhere being jerked around with their NIL money and not getting what they were promised must have completely missed my radar because, though I had heard some horror stories, I was mostly unaware of that going on (not that I'm surprised).

For comparison

"The minimum salary for an NFL player in 2023 is currently $750,000. That amount is specific to NFL rookies in their first season. As they progress, the minimum increases to $870,000 and $940,000 in Year 3."

If our starting left guard is making half of the NFL minimum, that's pretty good.

I have been a big supporter of the NIL methods other schools are working, but Michigan's is a great one as well.  The most productive players make hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the rest still make money, just not as much.  The more production you have, the more you make, and that is how it is in the work-place as well.  I still believe Michigan should be a little more relaxed on allowing boosters and third party entities to pay recruits, but this way of Michigan's NIL method is good, and it may be the way all college football works it after the NCAA settles some issues with the current methods.

Would Corum and Keegan have picked Michigan if they were high schoolers today?

Corum picked Michigan over OSU, LSU, and USC.

Keegan picked Michigan over UGA and PSU.

Regardless of how empty the promises are, they are still working on the vast, vast majority of recruits.

Sounds like Michigan's NIL program is designed to be less like a traditional rocket and more like an ion drive.  Hope the system remains in place long enough for the difference to get very large for our players.

Thanks for posting. I put my big click pants on and had no issue clicking on the link to read the article. But, I sometimes do yell at my microwave to heat faster so I do admit I am a flawed Dick.

Btw, isn't the article's author PNG on here for his digs at Michigan about a decade ago?

https://mgoblog.com/content/someone-find-michael-rosenberg-darth-vader-hat

Curious how NIL plays out long term. Winning + NIL is definitely a chicken vs egg argument. The A&M/Miami strategy of buying freshmen and portal players versus the Michigan transformational strategy is the best example of chicken/egg argument. On one hand, you don't want to disrupt the locker room. Where on the other hand, you clearly need a baseline of talent to win and kids/families can clearly be bought (See Elias Rudolph + all of A&M's 2022 class). Michigan is currently sitting with an 850 composite score on 247 with 2016 Clemson being the champion with the lowest ranked composite at 846. All other champions in the CFP era have had a 900+ composite of talent.

Good article. Thanks for sharing. Finally, I see how Michigan's method can work. Leaders and the best. Not one way is the best way, but I can see how Michigan's approach will help not just the star players. Kudos to stars who embraced this idea and help their teammates. 

Oh yay, a Michael Rosenberg article

Very interesting, including surprising $ amounts in the hundreds of thousands.

Thanks for posting.

Excellent thread, story, and article. Especially grateful for UM stories like this on MGOBLOG, keeping spotlight and focus on our great team.

This isn't meant to slag people on this site (and the fact this article was written by Michael Rosenberg, the guy behind the Stretchgate fiasco, is deeply ironic) but I noticed we kept hearing from certain people how far behind NIL UM was and yet when asked for actual examples where they were demonstrably worse than the majority of college programs and how it was hurting them, little evidence was shown.

UM is not going to just write a check to some random freshman and hope he doesn't suck; there are teams that absolutely do that and they're called Texas A&M and they haven't won more than 9 games in a decade and only 10+ games once since 2000.  I've long contended that UM is way too good at making money and being good to not take advantage of their NIL system but they weren't going to rush into some slap-dash design that isn't sustainable or efficient, and right now it sure looks like they've figured it out to a degree that works for them.

The article was informative and fair, but there is also the underlying assumption that it's NIL that has driven the winning culture.  I'm here to disagree with that, wholeheartedly.  The culture that has driven these wins is started and driven by James Joseph Harbaugh himself.  He is the one that made changes to the how the program was being run in 2020.  He changed the coaching staff.  He drives the offensive philosophy.  He chose the defensive philosophy.  His attitude determines they players attitudes.  His selection of personalities in recruits drives attitudes.  This is 100% Harbaugh's program, staffed with coaches that share his vision of what football is and should be, played by men who have bought in fully.

The B1G Championships and CFP games are not because of NIL, as Rosenberg would have us believe.  And that is the low-key, passive aggressive thrust of this article - is that NIL did it, not Harbaugh and the players.

Please continue to fuck off, Rosenberg...