“For the last couple of years my volunteer job of running Miami’s NIL- Red Brick Legacy has been a very large undertaking by many in this challenging landscape of college athletics.
It has brought a lot of hard work, sacrifice and dedication to create a sustainable and viable solution for our University.
The world of sports has taught me how crazy fans can be with hatred emails, twitter messages etc.. Wild!
With that said we have great student athletes, coaches, staff, collective and now goingto 3 Consecutive MAC Championship Games.
It ended up possibly working out. I am guessing Martin is transfer shopping for a qb next year if we didnt see Gotkowski but now we know we have a capable qb
I have no inside details to validate any of my assumptions, but I’d assume that would be Miami as the university not yet signing contracts with athletes directly, which some schools (all Big Ten schools at a minimum) have done.
If the NIL fund is paying athletes without signed contracts, that’s extremely dumb, so one would hope it’s not the case.
I agree contracts should be in place with the amount of money moving forward, and I bet it will be now with the new college sports commission NIL portal (something on paper is required for that).
But to reiterate from other threads, ncaa rules prohibit nil payments from being tied to on field performance, enrollment at a specific school, or even being on a specific team. You can’t use NIL as enticement for players to join a team (even though we all know that’s what happening) so any contract requiring a player to play, finish a season, or even just be on the team would violate ncaa rules.
I think this is where the new reality of college football is about to really hit us in the face… we all better be ready to buy more bourbon if Tommy goes and lights up the MAC Championship and a bowl game.
I don’t want to be a party pooper. He looks great. But at the high level, he’s not guaranteed to start. Put another way, the back up QB’s from big schools come to the MAC and put up very nice numbers. The number 3 QB from Wisconsin can prolly beat Buffalo and Ball State. Have you actually ever seen it the other way at QB? Even Finn couldn’t hold down the number one spot at Baylor. There are so many deep QB rooms out there at the highest level. Kid should stay here and enjoy his moment. Certainly not my place to say money doesn’t matter though and I don’t judge anyone who makes choices based on that. I guess it comes down to “if you want to play, stay.”
If I am drafting the contracts among other things will be a well crafted and very specific non compete provision. Not one that is open to restraint of trade allegations but perhaps to a few schools or conference. If they want to be paid like employees then treat them as such. And since there is no collective bargaining agreement in place that can’t act as a prohibiting factor to what I suggest.
My understanding (and really who has any understanding on how this works now) is that in the post-house settlement landscape starting for 2025-26 academic year, collectives can’t even pay players directly anymore anyways, so there will be no more Red Brick Legacy payments to players so collective contracts with players is a bit moot now.
Payments to players can only come either directly from Miami as part of the revenue share outlined in the settlement or from third parties using NIL for legitimate business purposes (so the company Riley Decker could use Gotkowski in an advertisement or something but would have to demonstrate he is being paid a market rate). The NIL GO portal run by CSC has to approve that all contracts are legitimate business and not pay to play.
I’m not sure how CSC is going to determine what market rate is for advertising for a MAC athlete for a company like Decker. I’m also not sure what the purpose of RBL is in the future if collective money can’t pay players, unless its just a pass through where RBL then donates to the Miami AD, but why even have the middle man then?
The CSC really hasn’t been ratified to do a damn thing. They sent a letter to all the P4 schools asking them to be governed by the CSC and if even one says no, the CSC will have no authority over anything. If you are a school like Texas Tech why would you agree?
I believe that’s incorrect. The settlement agreement, which everyone opted into (including Miami) created the rules around NIL already for the CSC. The CSC is trying to establish further rules in their membership agreement which is what they just sent out that needs everyone to accept (such as requiring arbitration instead of lawsuits and others powers around enforcement and penalties) but the settlement already created the necessary NIL rules.
I believe the NIL GO portal rules are in place already regardless of the thing they sent out this week to give themselves more power, but again, who the fuck knows what is going on these days.
I’m not saying he’s immediately going to get a massive offer from a P4 school… I am saying we are probably going to have to compensate him either at or near Finn’s pay, because if he does well the next two games those offers (from schools not too different than us) are certainly going to be there.
I could be wrong but I sincerely doubt that any Miami player who has only player 3-4 games is going to command a 6 figure NIL payment from a P4 school.
With our limited resources I don’t see us doing it either. What we provide is the chance to play and perhaps cash in later.
The players we have lost to P4 schools have been all-conference players and played extensively for at least 2 years. The only exceptions I can think of to that were Larvadain and Rashad Amos in that they were only here one year.
Even with that, a lot of these guys did not see the field anywhere close to what they had at Miami.
Amos had 9 rushing attempts at Ole Miss and ended up at Georgia State this year with 63 attempts vs. 210 he had with us.
Strader was the MAC cornerback of the year for us in 2024 but did not start at Auburn.
Adam Trick will be the most coveted player on our roster by the P4 if he enters the portal.
However, he should talk to Caiden Woullard before he makes any move.
He went from 1st team MAC DE and conference leader in sacks with us to making just one start with Oklahoma.
The money for a young man might be worth it but the opportunity to play and improve their craft on the field also has great value.
