Should Michigan Football give players academic bonuses?

Should Michigan football give consideration to the idea of giving academic bonuses to players?

As I was reading articles on one of my personal favorite sports websites The Spun by Sports Illustrated, I happened to come across a very intriguing article, which talked about academics, and how Alabama is rewarding their players for good grades.

ESPN writer Dan Murphy talked about bonus payments, and what’s allowed in college football, with the NCAA first allowing bonus payments in 2020. This got me thinking about how Michigan football can get actively involved in this new strategy.

Basically, there are ways for Michigan to give their athletes money directly. Obviously, one of the rules of NIL is that a public college/university cannot set up NIL deals for their athletes. It is against the rules of the NCAA, as all potential NIL deals have to go through third-party sponsors, like university boosters, or other outside companies/organizations.

Schools can provide the resources to the means to acquire an NIL deal for an athlete, but they can’t set up the deals for the athletes themselves. But for academics, it is different.

So, with that in mind, should Michigan football provide bonus payments to their athletes?

Why Michigan should definitely provide bonus payments to their players

Of course, Michigan should provide money to its athletes. We have gone on and on about how stringent Michigan’s admissions office is in letting in potential recruits, and sometimes, this highly selective admission office process has backfired and has caused Michigan to lose some recruits because of it.

We have already touched on it in the past, with the Xavier Worthy situation last year coming to mind most recently (still stings a little) and I’m sure there have been other situations in the past where that was an issue as well in the Jim Harbaugh era.

Some of the issues have to do with certain credits not directly transferring to Michigan’s undergraduate programs, as that is what happened with the Xavier Worthy situation, and, in the graduate admissions, this is one of the reasons why Michigan can’t just go out and get any graduate senior Joe Blow from the transfer portal to fix a hole or depth issue.

The other issue is grades. With admissions, Michigan football requires recruits to have a certain threshold GPA and standardized test score for admission (although a lot of the standardized tests have now become optional or not required to submit as part of the application). This also doesn’t include any number of extracurriculars that Michigan likes to see on applications.

If Michigan started paying their players’ academic bonuses, a lot of this pain and misery could go away with the headache of the admissions office.

Michigan HC Jim Harbaugh and the admissions office or AD Warde Manuel and the admissions office could strike some sort of deal to allow more players to come into the program, but they would be held to a high standard once they were accepted, and if they did well, they would be paid a monthly or yearly stipend as compensation for their hard work in the classroom.

Every Michigan football player that makes Academic All-Big Ten should automatically receive a stipend on the team, and depending on a combination of GPA, class (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior), and extracurriculars, the better a player does academically, the more money they should receive.

All of this comes in addition to any NIL deals that a football player might receive from third parties. There is a limit though, as the NCAA has set a dead cap at $5,980 per player per year, but even still, it is better than nothing. Any potential extra money (besides NIL) in an athlete’s pocket can be used as a recruiting pitch for Jim Harbaugh and his staff.

A lot of fans say that so many athletes only care about the monetary aspect of college football now. Can you blame them if that is the case? They’re just taking advantage of the times and trying to set themselves up well for their future. Some of these athletes come from nothing, and NIL has completely changed them and their families lives forever.

While I agree that athletes should also prioritize football (since that is literally the #1 reason why they are being recruited in the first place) it doesn’t mean that they can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of a legal NCAA rule. More power to them.

Sometimes, it does get out of line in terms of the sheer amount of money some of these guys are making without really proving anything on the field, obviously, and there’s widespread cheating from certain schools occurring still, but, these athletes should be paid for sacrificing their bodies for our entertainment.

Right now, unfortunately, Michigan isn’t one of the current 22 FBS schools (out of the 130 D-I schools) that is taking advantage of this academic bonus payment program. Only one school from the Big Ten –Wisconsin– is taking advantage of this program.

Honestly, it’s a little surprising that they haven’t started paying their players these stipends, as players need to stay motivated to do well in the classroom (because the young adult mind is generally wild and spontaneous) and Michigan is a renowned academic institution.

A lot of recruits really take pride in their education, as most of them talk about the draw of having a University of Michigan degree, but there are always those select few that need that extra motivation to want to come to such a rigorous school like Michigan to learn. They might love the football program, but the admissions process might turn them off.

Well, this little stipend, if given to the football team, among other recruiting pitches, could help push a recruit to Michigan if the recruit is weighing the pros and cons of Michigan and another school in their decision-making process.

Given how petty recruiting is, with any number of things affecting a recruit’s decision-making process, the stipend can be used as a little sweetener for Michigan in closing any recruiting battles. The stipend amount isn’t great, but it’s still better than nothing.

Michigan football fans, what do you think about bonus payments? Do you think Michigan will start doing this sooner rather than later? Do you think they will do it at all? Let us know in the comments below!