Michigan Football: NIL restrictions are coming, hopefully

Michigan football seems to be falling behind when it comes to NIL but are actual reforms coming? 

We’ve talked ad nauseum about the University of Michigan and its commitment to helping recruits with NIL, or lack thereof, but now, a new possible crackdown is coming to the college football world that will affect Michigan football and many other programs across the country.

It’s been known for a while that not every college football program plays by the rules. This has only been exacerbated 100-fold by the world of the transfer portal and the world of NIL. I mean, if we just look at recent news, Pittsburgh wide receiver Jordan Addison wants to leave for greener pastures (literally and figuratively) elsewhere, with USC, among other schools being one of the leaders.

Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi is very upset about how all of the events leading up to Addison putting his name in the transfer portal went about. He thinks that Lincoln Riley tampered with the recruitment of Addison, and thinks he got a big head start on recruiting and trying to pry him from Pittsburgh with promises of some serious dough.

I mean, the dude was the Biletnikoff Award winner as the best wide receiver in the country last year, with 100 receptions for 1,573 yards, so it would be crazy for any program not to try to add him to their team.

That was just the transfer portal news and only one player at that, but there have been many other layers to the offseason so far this year, as NIL has honestly started to get out of control, and that’s why the NCAA may crackdown on NIL sometime in the near future as Ross Dellenger said above.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s pretty obvious that not every football team plays by the rules in terms of NIL, with all of these massive NIL deals these college football players are getting and even some high school recruits.

The one rule that hasn’t changed in the world of NIL is the restriction of university boosters paying for NIL deals for recruits or players on the team. That is really the only exception to the NIL rules right now, besides any university-wide rules that may apply separately.

How does this affect Michigan football?

We all know by now that Michigan as a university hasn’t done that good of a job with helping its athletes with securing NIL deals, as Hunter Dickinson has already called out the university for lack of effort put into their athletes’ Name, Image, and Likeness.

The lack of innovative and cool NIL deals might be one of the reasons why Michigan is falling behind in the 2023 recruiting class for football, which is concerning, as we wrote about here.

Hopefully, though, this crackdown on boosters will help level the playing field and allow Michigan football to build more momentum on the recruiting trail in the class of 2023, because right now, it is severely underwhelming, just like last spring.

A lot of these talking heads are right, like Paul Finebaum, Dick Vitale, etc. Yes, athletes should still be paid for their services, but there need to be restrictions in some areas, and boosters need to go. This rule can’t come soon enough.

Oh yeah, and if you still don’t think this NIL thing is a big deal to recruits, and you think Michigan is doing okay with it, I’ll just leave this here: