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OSU has become the poster boy for NIL spending because their AD (for whatever reason-- it seems foolish in retrospect) disclosed their NIL budget. No other school (to the best of my knowledge) has done the same.

So the truth is we have no way of knowing if Ohio State spent the most money on NIL. I've seen wildly varying estimates, placing them anywhere from 1st to 11th. Most estimates seem to agree that they're at the very least behind Texas, and a lot of estimates have them behind Oregon as well.

One number that all Universities, even private ones like Notre Dame, need to report is their total football budget. Ohio State spent the fourth most on their football budget, with $72.4M. Notre Dame was fifth, with $71.9M.

I'm sad that between the portal and NIL, almost everything that made college football special seems to have disappeared. I will say that, at least this year, Ohio State used their NIL money almost exclusively to retain players they had recruited out of high school. The got Will Howard in the portal, but he wasn't expensive and there wasn't a bidding war for his services. They got Judkins, who was pretty much the same. The high-profile player the got was Caleb Downs, but his final two coming out of high school were Ohio State and Alabama, and he was part of a large number of players that left 'Bama when Saban retired, so it doesn't seem at all far fetched to hypothesize that he would have wound up at OSU even if the NIL didn't exist. This doesn't mean that spending all that money retaining their players wasn't a huge advantage; just that it doesn't feel as mercenary as it would if they had gone out and bought a 5* QB and 2 5* linemen and four or five other 4* players, which is something I can absolutely imagine happening in the not too distant future-- probably by Texas or Texas A&M, I would imagine, as I don't think anybody can compete with that oil money combined with that fanaticism.

If Notre Dame does not step up in regards to NIL like the other big schools, they will not be able to keep up. They now just made a massive paycheck, and need to put it to work

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Link: NCAA, Power 5 agree to deal that will let schools pay players

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I saw Colin Cowherd make this point, about the alumni base funding NIL deals, but I think his take is just wrong. He claimed that the Big10 had a big NIL advantage, but according to almost all of the estimates I've seen, the SEC had more schools in the top 10 NIL spends than the Big10 did. IMHO, a single wealthy oil baron is going to donate more to Texas or Texas A&M than all the alumni of any one school combined. No amount of lawyers and engineers and mid-level managers are going to contribute as much as Phil Knight. I think Cowherd's take shows his age; he hasn't adjusted to how much the distribution of wealth has changed in the United States in the last 15 years.

I guess I would be willing to concede that a large alumni base provides a higher floor-- a traditional Midwest Big10 school is probably always going to start with enough money to be at least average. But in terms of buying a championship, I'd rather have a T. Boone Pickens or Phil Knight. This is borne out by the list of top 10 donation totals to athletic departments, which has 7 SEC schools in the top 10, Oklahoma State because of Pickens, and Oregon at #1 because of Phil Knight: https://247sports.com/longformarticle/college-sports-top-donors-ranking-the-most-generous-athletics-boosters-214986422/#2225319

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