College football legend Johnny Manziel made waves this week after claiming that, had he played in today’s Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) era, he would have made so much money that going to the NFL would’ve been a “pay cut.”

Johnny Manziel Reflects on Missed NIL Millions, Takes Aim at Texas A&M’s Return on Investment

The 2012 Heisman Trophy winner dropped the bombshell during a recent interview with ESPN’s Greg McElroy, also taking a subtle jab at Texas A&M’s massive NIL spending with little to show for it on the field.

Manziel’s comments came in response to a question about how his NIL earnings would look if he were the quarterback of Texas A&M in 2024. “I really feel like I would’ve taken a pay cut had I gone to the NFL,” Manziel said. “Guys who are really marketable are making a great amount of money to the point where they have the opportunity to stay in school rather than go to the NFL early.”

It’s not hard to imagine. During his historic 2012 freshman season, Manziel became the first-ever freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, outpacing the competition by more than 150 first-place votes.

He threw for 3,706 yards and 26 touchdowns while rushing for 1,410 yards and 21 more scores. His 5,116 yards of total offense shattered the previous SEC record held by Cam Newton, making Manziel one of the most electrifying players in college football history.

Under today’s NIL system, a player with Manziel’s star power and national presence could realistically earn millions in endorsements, sponsorships, and social media deals.

In fact, during the 2012–13 academic year alone, Texas A&M brought in $740 million in donations, according to ESPN, a figure largely attributed to the Aggies’ move to the SEC and the national buzz surrounding Manziel’s play. While those funds didn’t come from NIL, the impact he had on the university’s bottom line was undeniable.

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Yet, despite the explosion of NIL opportunities in recent years, Manziel also pointed out the flaws in how some programs are approaching it. “If you look at A&M, I feel like we’ve put a ton of money into our NIL and it hasn’t necessarily translated onto the field,” he said.

His comments reflect a growing concern in college football, that NIL funds, often steered by wealthy boosters, don’t always result in better performance or stability.

Still, Manziel acknowledged there’s something special about the era he played in, even with its “underbelly” of shady dealings. But with NIL here to stay, he recognizes how different things could have been.

Commissioner Greg Sankey opened SEC Football Media Days on Monday by giving a shoutout to the city of Atlanta for hosting the unofficial kickoff event and noting his gratitude for the conference’s newest sponsor in Wayne-Sanderson Farms. He quickly pivoted into a monologue about how strong he believes each member institution is on the field while discussing some of the off-field headlines that have taken the college football world by storm this summer.

Sankey subtly addressed rumors that the SEC might pull away from the NCAA if the governing body slips up when managing the College Football Playoff or name, image, and likeness (NIL) issues and revenue sharing. Using a marathon as a metaphor, he said the “messy” days of paying athletes are starting to simmer down after a recent federal settlement and believes the best of the race is ahead.

“I have run and finished 41 marathons in my lifetime. It’s been a while, but I do remember the importance of getting it off to the right kind of start,” Sankey said. “We’re in the middle of change, and in the middle of anything significant, it will get messy. This doesn’t mean you leave. In a marathon, it doesn’t mean you step off the course because myself — as poorly as I may have felt sometimes after two or three miles – recall that those moments might actually produce the best efforts.”

The rest of the race could include the conference’s role in controlling how future College Football Playoff brackets look. According to Sankey, the SEC and Big Ten have “authority” when it comes to the format after the 2025 season.

However, Sankey and Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti are not currently aligned to pack the most powerful punch – not for a lack of communication, though, as Sankey noted they spoke four times last week.

“I think there’s this notion that there has to be this magic moment and something has to happen with expansion and it has to be forced – no,” Sankey said. “When you’re given authority, you want to be responsible in using that authority. I think both of us are prepared to do so. The upfront responsibility in this, maybe where some of the confusion lies, is we have the ability to present a format or format ideas, gather information, see if we can all agree within that room. We don’t need unanimity.”

The Big Ten, which has won the last two national championships, favors a 4-4-2-2-1 format, giving four automatic bids to the SEC and Big Ten and awarding the ACC and Big 12 two bids apiece. The SEC switched gears at its spring meetings in Florida, now favoring five conference champions and 11 at-large bids, which would presumably favor the top conferences most seasons.

The commissioner, now in his 10th year leading the SEC, backed up such authoritative statements with on-field evidence of his conference’s domination.

“For the 26th consecutive season, we led the nation in football attendance,” Sankey said, pointing to the league’s gridiron success against non-conference Power Four opponents. “It’s a special place with a remarkable set of people, remarkable competition, and remarkable achievements.”

Beyond backing up the SEC’s status as a “super conference,” Sankey also pointed to what he believes is a need for further structure in college athletics to be established by federal lawmakers. Specifically, Sankey referenced the recently introduced the SCORE Act, a U.S. House bill that provides for a national framework for NIL in college sports. The commissioner sees the policy proposal as progress.

“That’s an important moment,” Sankey said. “I think what’s happening in college athletics is a nonpartisan issue, but using the typical nomenclature, to have members of both of our major political parties willing to step out and introduce the SCORE Act is a positive step.”

While Sankey and other administrators work to straighten out the details that will determine college football’s long-term future, the student-athletes and coaches aim to return the SEC to the top of the game’s mountain at year’s end. After Ohio State claimed the 2024 national title, 2023-2024 became the first two-year stretch since 2013-2014 that an SEC team did not win the national championship.

Each of the SEC’s 16 programs will kickoff the 2025 season in late August.

MANHATTAN, Kan. – K-State saw two baseball players selected on the final day of the 2025 Major League Baseball Draft, as shortstop Maximus Martin and left-handed pitcher Jacob Frost heard their names called on Monday.
 
Martin was selected in the 10^th round by the Boston Red Sox with the 298^th overall pick, followed by Frost, who was taken with the 315^th pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers to close out the round. Martin becomes just the second Wildcat ever drafted by the Red Sox, joining Robert Youngdahl (2011), while Frost is the ninth player in program history selected by the Dodgers.
 
Under seventh-year head coach Pete Hughes, K-State has had 12 players selected within the first 10 rounds. In total, Hughes has overseen 91 players selected in the MLB Draft, including eight first-rounders during his 28 seasons as a head coach while he has recruited 145 players who have gone on to play professionally.
 
In his first season at K-State, Martin earned ABCA/Rawlings First Team All-Region honors and was named Second Team All-Big 12. A native of Edgewater Park, New Jersey, he slashed .320/.420/.612, tallying a team-high 18 doubles and 14 home runs – tied for fourth-most in a single season in program history.
 
Martin was one of the league’s top offensive performers, finishing the regular season ranked in the Big 12’s top 10 in three statistical categories. He garnered both Golden Spikes Award and National Shortstop of the Week recognition. He led the team with 18 games with two or more hits and ranked second with 15 multi-RBI games.
 
Frost caps his second season with the Cats where earned his first All-Big 12 accolade in 2025, striking out 75 batters while holding opponents to a .238 batting average – the eighth-best mark in the league. The St. Louis, Missouri, product was one of two K-State pitchers to record 10 or more strikeouts in a single game this season, notching a career-high 10 against KU. He also led the Big 12 with 22 strikeouts looking in conference play.
 
Across two seasons with the Wildcats, Frost posted a 4-6 record with a 6.49 ERA and totaled 115 strikeouts over 32 appearances and 23 starts, including three quality starts. In 2024, he helped lead K-State to its ninth no-hitter in program history.

Less than two weeks after terms of a multibillion-dollar college sports settlement went into effect, friction erupted over the definition of a “valid business purpose” that collectives making name, image likeness payments to players are supposed to have.

The new College Sports Commission sent a letter to athletic directors last week saying it was rejecting deals in which players were receiving money from collectives that were created solely to pay them and don’t provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

A lead attorney for the players responded by saying those instructions went against settlement terms and asking the CSC to rescind the guidance.

“This process is undermined when the CSC goes off the reservation and issues directions to the schools that are not consistent with the Settlement Agreement terms,” attorney Jeffrey Kessler wrote to NCAA outside counsel Rakesh Kilaru in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Yahoo Sports first reported details of the letter, in which Kessler threatens to take the issue to a judge assigned with resolving disputes involved in the settlement.

Kessler told AP his firm was not commenting on the contents of the letter, and Kilaru did not immediately respond to AP’s request for a comment.

Yahoo quoted a CSC spokesman as saying the parties are working to resolve differences and that “the guidance issued by the College Sports Commission … is entirely consistent with the House settlement and the rules that have been agreed upon with class counsel.”

When NIL payments became allowed in 2021, boosters formed so-called “collectives” that were closely tied to universities to work out contracts with the players, who still weren’t allowed to be paid directly by the schools.

Terms of the House settlement allow schools to make the payments now, but keep the idea of outside payments from collectives, which have to be approved by the CSC if they are worth $600 or more.

The CSC, in its letter last week, explained that if a collective reaches a deal, for instance, for an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, that collective does not have a “valid business purpose” because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

Another example of a disallowed deal was one an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because, the CSC guidance said, the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose.”

Kessler’s letter notes that the “valid business purpose” rule was designed to ensure athletes were not simply being paid to play, and did not prohibit NIL collectives from paying athletes for the type of deals described above.

To prevent those payments “would be to create a new prohibition on payments by a NIL collective that is not provided for or contemplated by the Settlement Agreement, causing injury to the class members who should be free to receive those payments,” Kessler wrote.

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Less than two weeks after terms of a multibillion-dollar college sports settlement went into effect, friction erupted over the definition of a “valid business purpose” that collectives making name, image likeness payments to players are supposed to have.

The new College Sports Commission sent a letter to athletic directors last week saying it was rejecting deals in which players were receiving money from collectives that were created solely to pay them and don’t provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

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A lead attorney for the players responded by saying those instructions went against settlement terms and asking the CSC to rescind the guidance.

“This process is undermined when the CSC goes off the reservation and issues directions to the schools that are not consistent with the Settlement Agreement terms,” attorney Jeffrey Kessler wrote to NCAA outside counsel Rakesh Kilaru in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Yahoo Sports first reported details of the letter, in which Kessler threatens to take the issue to a judge assigned with resolving disputes involved in the settlement.

Kessler told AP his firm was not commenting on the contents of the letter, and Kilaru did not immediately respond to AP’s request for a comment.

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Yahoo quoted a CSC spokesman as saying the parties are working to resolve differences and that “the guidance issued by the College Sports Commission … is entirely consistent with the House settlement and the rules that have been agreed upon with class counsel.”

When NIL payments became allowed in 2021, boosters formed so-called “collectives” that were closely tied to universities to work out contracts with the players, who still weren’t allowed to be paid directly by the schools.

Terms of the House settlement allow schools to make the payments now, but keep the idea of outside payments from collectives, which have to be approved by the CSC if they are worth $600 or more.

The CSC, in its letter last week, explained that if a collective reaches a deal, for instance, for an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, that collective does not have a “valid business purpose” because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

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Another example of a disallowed deal was one an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because, the CSC guidance said, the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose.”

Kessler’s letter notes that the “valid business purpose” rule was designed to ensure athletes were not simply being paid to play, and did not prohibit NIL collectives from paying athletes for the type of deals described above.

To prevent those payments “would be to create a new prohibition on payments by a NIL collective that is not provided for or contemplated by the Settlement Agreement, causing injury to the class members who should be free to receive those payments,” Kessler wrote.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports