Marcus, a 17-year-old five-star linebacker from Valdosta, Georgia, had narrowed his list to two schools last October. Then one collective made a call that changed everything. If you think coaches still win recruiting battles with highlight reels and facility tours, you are already three years behind.
Here is what the numbers tell us: according to On3’s 2024 NIL valuations, the top 25 college football recruits now carry average NIL valuations exceeding $800,000 before they ever take a college snap. That is not a gradual shift. That is a rewrite of everything coaches, fans, and donors thought they understood about how rosters get built.
Nobody is talking about this, but they should be. The economics underneath NIL are ugly, structural, and accelerating. Here are 7 specific ways the money has flipped the entire recruiting game.
1. Collectives Now Outspend Coaching Staffs on Recruiting
The Texas Longhorns’ Longhorn Collective reportedly deployed over $15 million in NIL commitments during the 2023-2024 cycle, according to reporting by The Athletic. To put that in perspective, the average Group of Five head coaching salary is $1.2 million per year. When a collective’s annual spend dwarfs a rival school’s entire coaching payroll, the old recruiting hierarchy collapses completely. Coaches used to be the brand. Now some collectives have their own Instagram pages, press releases, and direct lines to agents. That dynamic is not slowing down.
Did You Know: According to On3’s 2024 Collective Rankings, fewer than 30 schools operate collectives with confirmed annual budgets exceeding $5 million. Every program outside that group is recruiting from a structural disadvantage.
2. The Quinn Ewers Moment That Changed Everything
To understand why this matters, you need to go back to August 2021. Quinn Ewers, the consensus No. 1 overall recruit in the 2022 class, did something nobody had done before: he reclassified early from Ohio State, skipped his senior year of high school, and enrolled at Ohio State in August 2021 specifically to monetize his NIL immediately. Estimates from Front Office Sports placed his initial NIL deal value at approximately $1.4 million, secured through partnerships including a reported deal with Gt Sport hair care products. Ohio State, at the time, had one of the weaker collective infrastructures among Big Ten heavyweights. By December 2021, Ewers had transferred to Texas, where the collective infrastructure was more developed and the market for his brand in Austin was significantly larger. He started games for the Longhorns in 2022 and led them to the College Football Playoff in the 2023 season. The Ewers sequence was the first time the entire country watched a five-star prospect treat a college program as a short-term business stop on the way to a better NIL market. Coaches across the country saw it happen in real time and knew the old rules were finished.
Warning: Collective deals structured for recruits pre-enrollment, like the arrangements that accelerated Ewers’ transfer decision, now face new NCAA scrutiny under the House v. NCAA settlement framework. Any donor participating in a collective that promises specific compensation to uncommitted recruits could be funding arrangements the new rules are actively targeting. Verify your collective’s compliance posture before writing a check.
3. Mid-Majors Are Getting Squeezed Out of Their Own Backyard
Five years ago, a program like Appalachian State or Liberty could win a regional recruiting battle on the promise of early playing time and a clear path to the NFL draft. That pitch still exists, but it is getting run over. When a Power Four collective can offer a three-star in-state recruit $200,000 to cross conference lines, playing time arguments get complicated fast. This is a gut punch for mid-majors in practical terms. They cannot match the dollar figures, their collectives are underfunded by a factor of ten in most cases, and they are now competing not just against other mid-majors but against every Power Four program that decided their zip code recruit is worth a financial offer. If you are a fan of a program outside the Power Four, ask yourself this directly: do you actually know what your school’s collective raised last year, and is that number growing fast enough to stay competitive in the next recruiting cycle? If you cannot answer that question, you are flying blind as a supporter.
Pro Tip: Go to On3.com right now and search your school’s collective ranking under the NIL section. Programs are ranked by estimated collective budget. If your school is not in the top 60, your coaching staff is recruiting with one hand tied behind their back. Knowing that number changes how you evaluate every signing class your program announces.
4. The Transfer Portal Created a Second Recruiting Market Running Year-Round
The financial pull that coaches won’t say out loud is this: the portal is now a parallel recruiting market that never closes. According to NCAA data reported by ESPN in 2024, over 2,500 FBS players entered the transfer portal during the 2023-2024 cycle. Collectives are not just funding initial commitments anymore. They are actively funding portal poaching, making offers to players already enrolled elsewhere the moment a contract dispute or playing time issue surfaces. For more on how mid-cycle roster moves are actually damaging programs from the inside, the WolfTrend breakdown on the mid-season transfer myth wrecking programs is worth your time. The economics of roster retention are now as important as the economics of signing new talent.
5. Agents Are Running High School Recruiting Now
This is the part nobody wants to say plainly. Certified athlete agents, and plenty of uncertified operators who use the term loosely, are actively involved in the recruitment of high school juniors and seniors. According to an investigative report by Yahoo Sports in 2023, several prominent NIL agents had direct communication with recruits as young as 15. The recruitment of Marcus, the linebacker mentioned at the top of this article, almost certainly involved a third-party advisor who negotiated on his behalf before a letter of intent was ever signed. Coaches, facilities, playing time, tradition — those were the pillars. Now coaches negotiate around advisors who are negotiating around collectives. The chain of influence has an extra link that nobody officially acknowledges.
6. Donor Money Is Moving in Ways Athletic Departments Cannot Track
This one should concern you personally as a fan or a donor. Collective giving sits outside traditional athletic department accounting structures. A 2023 report from the Drake Group, a college sports reform organization, flagged that fewer than 40 percent of active collectives publish any form of public financial disclosure. When you write a check to your program’s booster club, do you know whether any portion of that money flows into a collective structure? And if it does, do you know which players it is funding and under what contractual terms? These are not hypothetical questions. The House v. NCAA settlement, expected to reshape revenue sharing through 2025 and beyond, may force significantly more transparency. Until it does, the financial architecture of modern recruiting is operating in a near-complete information blackout for regular fans. Speaking of financial structures worth understanding, the broader conversation about how institutional money moves is something WolfTrend has also examined through the lens of personal finance in pieces like why splitting accounts before major financial moves matters. The logic of money separation applies to collectives too.
7. The Schools Winning Are Treating Recruiting Like a Startup Funding Round
Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Texas are not running traditional recruiting operations anymore. They are running structured capital deployment campaigns. Their collectives hold pitch meetings. They tier recruits by ROI potential, where ROI means NFL draft visibility, jersey sales, and social media growth for the collective brand. A five-star quarterback who has 400,000 Instagram followers is a different asset class than a five-star offensive lineman with 12,000. The economics are explicit, even when nobody says them out loud. What fans actually need to know is that their program’s ability to compete in this environment depends less on the coach’s personality and more on whether the collective has a functioning business model. Start there.
Your Next 3 Steps
Step 1: Go to On3.com right now and pull up the NIL collective rankings. Search your specific program and find its estimated annual collective budget. Then compare it to the programs on your upcoming schedule. That number is the most honest prediction of future recruiting competitiveness you will find anywhere, and most fans have never looked at it once.
Step 2: At the next fan event, booster dinner, or coach’s radio show you attend, ask this specific question out loud: “What percentage of our athletic department’s booster revenue currently flows into collective infrastructure, and how does that compare to our top two recruiting rivals?” A vague answer tells you everything. A specific one tells you even more.
Step 3: Bookmark the On3 transfer portal tracker at on3.com/transfer-portal and set position-group alerts for your program’s biggest roster needs right now. The portal moves fast. Collectives move faster. Being 48 hours late to a portal story is the difference between understanding your team’s roster and being blindsided at media day. Check it weekly, not just during signing periods.
