Official 2023 Gophers Football Recruiting Thread: Links, Tweets, Videos, Rumors





Are we doomed with NILhilism?
 


looking like theNIL deals will make us less appealing to the 4* kids. Hope I am wrong. We may have to forget about recruiting ranking and focus on the portal
 








looking like theNIL deals will make us less appealing to the 4* kids. Hope I am wrong. We may have to forget about recruiting ranking and focus on the portal
Going to be tough to lose our status as a go to destination for 4* talent now that NIL is in play. Not sure how we are going to recover from the massive loss of talented recruits no longer coming our way. :)

Fans make way too much of the NIL thing, there are going to be guys who only look at how much money they can make (can almost guarantee those are guys Fleck wouldn't target anyway) and there are going to be lots of recruits that don't base their college decision on NIL money.

We don't have to win the recruiting rankings to win on the field. We just need to keep bringing in power 5 level talent and bolstering it with guys from the portal.
 




The Gophers have demonstrated that they can beat teams loaded with high recruit rankings.

The NIL was allowed with not a lot of thought of the consequences. Will the NCAA step in and put boundaries?
 

The Gophers have demonstrated that they can beat teams loaded with high recruit rankings.

The NIL was allowed with not a lot of thought of the consequences. Will the NCAA step in and put boundaries?
Has been discussed in other threads that there really isn't much of anything the NCAA can do to regulate it.

But I still have yet to get a true explanation on how NIL drastically shifts the college football landscape or has a massive impact on us.

The players demanding the big paydays weren't coming here before NIL either. If anything, NIL has the potential to spread some of the top end talent around to more places which would help in some ways by weakening the teams with a stranglehold on the best athletes every year.

I hear some talk about NIL and act like that money is going to completely dictate where players go to school, but the reality is that it is still a very small pool of players that can demand the big money. For most players, NIL income will be nice but not life changing or enough to make them prioritize that over other factors.

For the vast majority of players it is still going to come down to going to a place where they feel they have the best chance to succeed on the field with coaches they trust and have developed a strong relationship with. That hasn't changed, even in this new college football landscape for the overwhelming majority of players.
 





Has been discussed in other threads that there really isn't much of anything the NCAA can do to regulate it.

But I still have yet to get a true explanation on how NIL drastically shifts the college football landscape or has a massive impact on us.

The players demanding the big paydays weren't coming here before NIL either. If anything, NIL has the potential to spread some of the top end talent around to more places which would help in some ways by weakening the teams with a stranglehold on the best athletes every year.

I hear some talk about NIL and act like that money is going to completely dictate where players go to school, but the reality is that it is still a very small pool of players that can demand the big money. For most players, NIL income will be nice but not life changing or enough to make them prioritize that over other factors.

For the vast majority of players it is still going to come down to going to a place where they feel they have the best chance to succeed on the field with coaches they trust and have developed a strong relationship with. That hasn't changed, even in this new college football landscape for the overwhelming majority of players.

I think you are being naive. This isn't just about the big money NIL deals this is about the schools where kids can get just a nice little bonus to play. That will definitely play in.

Put it this way lets say two schools are recruiting you A and B. Both are roughly the same reputation-wise and have a similar campus life and cost of living.

Team A offers you a scholarship
Team B offers you a scholarship and boosters have NIL deals in place that give you extra money. Not life changing but meaning you can have some fun and not struggle.

You are 18/19 years old and don't have much money to your name, where you going? Be honest neither school is Minnesota so leave bias at the door.

Honestly that is the type of stuff The U should be pushing for.
 

I think you are being naive. This isn't just about the big money NIL deals this is about the schools where kids can get just a nice little bonus to play. That will definitely play in.

Put it this way lets say two schools are recruiting you A and B. Both are roughly the same reputation-wise and have a similar campus life and cost of living.

Team A offers you a scholarship
Team B offers you a scholarship and boosters have NIL deals in place that give you extra money. Not life changing but meaning you can have some fun and not struggle.

You are 18/19 years old and don't have much money to your name, where you going? Be honest neither school is Minnesota so leave bias at the door.

Honestly that is the type of stuff The U should be pushing for.
Do we know for a fact that the U of M can't/isn't offering the kind of NIL money opportunities you are talking about here?

We know the U doesn't have the crazy boosters, willing to throw around massive sums of money. But I would be surprised to hear we aren't able to offer up anything to the players.

Sure, all other things being equal, if school A offers some side cash and school B doesn't then the player is likely to pick school A. But I gotta believe our players are not being left out in the cold on the NIL front. And I also think it is rarely that cut and dried where a small sum of money is going to be enough to sway the players decision. So I really don't see this being a massive issue for us when it comes to recruiting the level of athletes we are likely to be able to recruit here.

I certainly could be naive. But we weren't playing in the space where the NIL deals are going to be a major factor before, and we are unlikely to try and start playing in that space now. That has been the reality of the college landscape for a long time, long before NIL was even a thing.
 

I think we would know about it if the U was doing that.

And I think if we aren't dealing with that as competition yet we will be soon. There is no chance schools like Iowa and Nebraska won't figure out some sort of pay plan with a booster for NIL. (Wisconsin too) Those fanbases just have way more buy in than ours does because of the exclusivity factor. (Iowa has Iowa State but still) They own those markets and have plenty of alumni willing to chip in. It is not a matter of if but when.

We won't be competing with the TAMUs or OSUs of the world, but we don't anyways for recruits. But plans like what MSU has to offer are going to be the future of this and we do compete with them. (though we are still below them obviously) If you don't think that will have an affect on recruiting then we just aren't going to agree. Not only that but if you are transferring where you going to go?

The next five years are going to be interesting to watch...though it will likely kill what's left of my fandom :(
 

I think we would know about it if the U was doing that.

And I think if we aren't dealing with that as competition yet we will be soon. There is no chance schools like Iowa and Nebraska won't figure out some sort of pay plan with a booster for NIL. (Wisconsin too) Those fanbases just have way more buy in than ours does because of the exclusivity factor. (Iowa has Iowa State but still) They own those markets and have plenty of alumni willing to chip in. It is not a matter of if but when.

We won't be competing with the TAMUs or OSUs of the world, but we don't anyways for recruits. But plans like what MSU has to offer are going to be the future of this and we do compete with them. (though we are still below them obviously) If you don't think that will have an affect on recruiting then we just aren't going to agree. Not only that but if you are transferring where you going to go?

The next five years are going to be interesting to watch...though it will likely kill what's left of my fandom :(
I get that the easy assumption to make is that if we aren't hearing about it then it isn't happening. But NIL info is so vague at this point that I personally don't feel comfortable making that leap.

We hear about the crazy deals individual players get, and then we get reports of team A doing this and team B doing that, but the info is sporadic and not alway very reliable.

Until we hit a point where we are getting definitive reports saying that our competitors are all doing something while we are doing nothing, I am going to choose to believe that our head coach who has shown a real willingness to embrace new trends and adapt, is doing what he can to make sure we keep pace with our competition.

The only thing we know for sure right now is that we are not going to be able to keep pace (from an NIL standpoint) with the schools who have boosters willing to throw around stupid money. Outside of that, we really don't know much in terms of what is being done, but just because we aren't hearing about it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
 

Do we know for a fact that the U of M can't/isn't offering the kind of NIL money opportunities you are talking about here?

We know the U doesn't have the crazy boosters, willing to throw around massive sums of money. But I would be surprised to hear we aren't able to offer up anything to the players.

Sure, all other things being equal, if school A offers some side cash and school B doesn't then the player is likely to pick school A. But I gotta believe our players are not being left out in the cold on the NIL front. And I also think it is rarely that cut and dried where a small sum of money is going to be enough to sway the players decision. So I really don't see this being a massive issue for us when it comes to recruiting the level of athletes we are likely to be able to recruit here.

I certainly could be naive. But we weren't playing in the space where the NIL deals are going to be a major factor before, and we are unlikely to try and start playing in that space now. That has been the reality of the college landscape for a long time, long before NIL was even a thing.
Where there is a way there is a will, or is it the other way around?
 


The schools aren’t offering up NIL deals, as far as I know. The teams with big bucks boosters are simply benefitting from the fact that boosters are throwing money at some players via booster-led NIL deals, without any coordination with or control by the school. Schools aren’t in charge, even marginally. NIL is being run by boosters off the school’s balance sheet.
 

Where there is a way there is a will, or is it the other way around?
All I know is that I don’t recognize the guy in my driver’s license and passport pictures. He got old in a hurry. Covid-19 wasn’t too kind.
 

The schools aren’t offering up NIL deals, as far as I know. The teams with big bucks boosters are simply benefitting from the fact that boosters are throwing money at some players via booster-led NIL deals, without any coordination with or control by the school. Schools aren’t in charge, even marginally. NIL is being run by boosters off the school’s balance sheet.
Both Michigan and Michigan State have relationships with INFLCR to help facilitate NIL deals between athletes and interested boosters, organizations, etc. As far as I know, Minnesota does not have a third party coordinating deals between athletes and boosters or companies. NIL is the future and any recruit is going to want to know about the U's facilities, academics, AND the financial opportunities for NIL deals when making a decision about their future.
 

Both Michigan and Michigan State have relationships with INFLCR to help facilitate NIL deals between athletes and interested boosters, organizations, etc. As far as I know, Minnesota does not have a third party coordinating deals between athletes and boosters or companies. NIL is the future and any recruit is going to want to know about the U's facilities, academics, AND the financial opportunities for NIL deals when making a decision about their future.
 





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