On the flip side, if you can reel in a program-changing recruit like Derik Queen, you might be able to keep him from going pro by offering seven figures per season.
The other big question: how will that $20 million be spent? It doesn't seem like Title IX will apply, so ADs won't be required to spend money evenly. Most are expected to spend between 75 and 90 percent on football and men's basketball, leaving the non-revenue programs to mostly fend for themselves by fundraising. Now that college sports are becoming full-fledged business, lifelong pretenses of fairness will drop in favor of fueling the teams that make the money. This could lead to wealthy athletic programs like Ohio State dominating the non-revenue sports because they can find a couple million for each of them in the couch cushions, while other schools are struggling just to find the two money-making sports.
Maryland's men's basketball's highest-paid players are in the $500,000 neighborhood this season their NIL budget likely to roughly double to around $6 million next season. How much will the Big Ten's best-funded men's basketball programs spend on next year's rosters?
"They'll be spending, top schools, in the five-to-eight million range, would be my guess. Maybe even a little more," Geller said. "We may be on the lower end of that [top] level, but we'll be competitive and even looking back this year, we didn't miss out on anyone because we didn't have money."
Although the school has a basketball-crazed fanbase, football still generates the majority of the revenue and will have a roster six or seven times as large, so Mike Locksley, who's faced an uphill battle with one of the Big Ten's smallest football NIL budgets, will get a big chunk of that $20 million salary cap. Locksley is also close to Under Armour's Plank. Multiple sources said Plank (pictured with Locksley and Stephen Curry), who along with Barry Gossett has been one of the program's top two benefactors for years, is expected to be a generous supporter of the program's NIL efforts moving forward. Under Armour's stock has slowly been rebounding after its yearslong freefall, something every Terps fan should be rooting for.
There's no telling how that will affect, for example, the women's basketball program. Brenda Frese's program received more than one-third of the funding the men's program received last season. In such a cutthroat, survivalist landscape, it's hard to imagine how Evans will to able justify allotting that much of the money on any program that doesn't return a profit. Some sports could struggle to survive, though with most schools pouring most of the cash into football and men's basketball, most of their peers could be in a similar university-funding situation, meaning collectives could still be vital.
The value of NIL deals has multiplied quickly during the past couple of years. It'll be on Evans and the other decision-makers at Maryland to keep up with all of the above.
"Looking at projections from three years ago to what we spent last year, what we spent this year, it's three and four times the amount that it did when it started," Geller said. "And at this point, it's kind of a players, sellers' market where the student-athletes who really just want to maximize their earning potential, with hundreds of schools out there, they're going to find someone that's going to pay them what they want if that's what they want to do."
The other big question: how will that $20 million be spent? It doesn't seem like Title IX will apply, so ADs won't be required to spend money evenly. Most are expected to spend between 75 and 90 percent on football and men's basketball, leaving the non-revenue programs to mostly fend for themselves by fundraising. Now that college sports are becoming full-fledged business, lifelong pretenses of fairness will drop in favor of fueling the teams that make the money. This could lead to wealthy athletic programs like Ohio State dominating the non-revenue sports because they can find a couple million for each of them in the couch cushions, while other schools are struggling just to find the two money-making sports.
Maryland's men's basketball's highest-paid players are in the $500,000 neighborhood this season their NIL budget likely to roughly double to around $6 million next season. How much will the Big Ten's best-funded men's basketball programs spend on next year's rosters?
"They'll be spending, top schools, in the five-to-eight million range, would be my guess. Maybe even a little more," Geller said. "We may be on the lower end of that [top] level, but we'll be competitive and even looking back this year, we didn't miss out on anyone because we didn't have money."
Although the school has a basketball-crazed fanbase, football still generates the majority of the revenue and will have a roster six or seven times as large, so Mike Locksley, who's faced an uphill battle with one of the Big Ten's smallest football NIL budgets, will get a big chunk of that $20 million salary cap. Locksley is also close to Under Armour's Plank. Multiple sources said Plank (pictured with Locksley and Stephen Curry), who along with Barry Gossett has been one of the program's top two benefactors for years, is expected to be a generous supporter of the program's NIL efforts moving forward. Under Armour's stock has slowly been rebounding after its yearslong freefall, something every Terps fan should be rooting for.
There's no telling how that will affect, for example, the women's basketball program. Brenda Frese's program received more than one-third of the funding the men's program received last season. In such a cutthroat, survivalist landscape, it's hard to imagine how Evans will to able justify allotting that much of the money on any program that doesn't return a profit. Some sports could struggle to survive, though with most schools pouring most of the cash into football and men's basketball, most of their peers could be in a similar university-funding situation, meaning collectives could still be vital.
The value of NIL deals has multiplied quickly during the past couple of years. It'll be on Evans and the other decision-makers at Maryland to keep up with all of the above.
"Looking at projections from three years ago to what we spent last year, what we spent this year, it's three and four times the amount that it did when it started," Geller said. "And at this point, it's kind of a players, sellers' market where the student-athletes who really just want to maximize their earning potential, with hundreds of schools out there, they're going to find someone that's going to pay them what they want if that's what they want to do."
