TEMPE, AZ (AZFamily) — Arizona State ranks somewhere in the middle of the Big 12 Conference for football name, image and likeness (NIL) spending, according to a Tempe-based agent.

Peter Boyle, founder and CEO of Activate Sports Management, said ASU has made significant progress since NIL rules were implemented in July 2021.

“If I were to guess based off what I see when you’re talking about football, which is primarily what people are talking, and men’s basketball,” Boyle said. “Keep in mind, there’s baseball NIL and softball NIL and volleyball. Those programs also have revenue share, although to a much lesser degree. But when it comes to football, I would put ASU somewhere in the middle of the Big 12.”

NIL transforms college sports

More than four years after NIL rules were first put in place, the impacts on college sports are becoming clear.

“It’s professional sports now,” Boyle said. “I have a kind of thing where, when my clients sign their first deal, I say welcome to professional sports. Like it is that.”

Boyle said contracts from some schools include incentive-based payments.

“You literally see contracts from some schools, not the Big 12, but I have clients across all different Power 4 schools that have, like, incentive-based payments in them,” he said. “Like, if you are the Big Ten Player of the Week, that’s another $10,000. So, these are professional sports contracts.”

When it comes to quarterback Sam Leavitt, Boyle believes his move to LSU is largely about money.

ASU’s NIL progress

Universities do not report their NIL dollars publicly, making exact comparisons difficult. However, Boyle said he has insight from running a NIL agency based in Tempe.

Three years ago, Boyle would have ranked ASU at the bottom of the pack. NIL dollars differ by conference, with SEC and Big Ten deals typically exceeding Big 12 amounts, though the gap has narrowed.

Boyle has insider knowledge from ASU athletes he represents.

“What they were making three years ago is what a lot of the roster makes now. And those are the top paid guys,” he said. “So it’s a notable difference for sure.”

Donations versus business deals

ASU football coach Kenny Dillingham recently spoke at Mountain America Stadium about finding a wealthy person in Phoenix who could give the football program $20 million. However, Boyle said large donations are not the answer.

“If a donor gives $20 million today, what does that do? It’s monopoly money,” Boyle said. “Because that’s not a business deal that has true business value that can be put into NIL go and pass the CSC. That’s a donation. That’s the old model.”

Boyle said a large donation could help offset revenue share costs and provide ASU more money for facilities, but if the university is playing by the rules, such a donation would not help with NIL deals.

Business deals are more important in college sports, according to Boyle.

“I think if businesses get involved and they can pass through the CSC and be true NIL deals, then there are certainly businesses that hopefully would get involved that would significantly increase ASU’s value provide above cap or above market deals,” he said.

Boyle said he expects the current NIL system to continue without significant changes and that fans should get used to the new landscape.

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Former college football coach Chris Klieman discussed the “factors that drove his decision” to retire, including the lack of guardrails around NIL and the transfer portal, according to Ned Seaton of the Manhattan MERCURY. Klieman said he was “kind of at my wits’ end,” as “anybody can do whatever the heck they want.” He added, “I’ve talked to (many coaches) across the country, we’re all kind of like, ‘We need some guardrails so that somebody can’t spend $45 million, while somebody else is spending 15.” Klieman: “You get done playing Colorado, and come Monday, man, there’s 20 (players’ agents) that want to know a number, or they’re ready to go into the (transfer) portal.” Klieman said for all of December and January he would “work with whatever 80 of our kids to see if we can keep them, and if not, go work with 580 kids to fill the 30 spots we’re going to need,” which to him is “not recruiting.” Klieman: “You’re just putting compensation packages together. … That’s the way college football is, and I’m OK with that, but I don’t have to be a part of it if that’s the way it’s going down.” Klieman said that the issue “needs unified action by university presidents, Congress, and ultimately, a commissioner of college football who could impose and enforce limits and guardrails.” However, he “doesn’t currently see a real path to any of those things, because it will be very difficult to get universal agreement, since those who have the most money have no incentive to sign on” (Manhattan MERCURY, 1/10).

After two seasons of despair, Virginia Tech football fans finally have something to cheer about.

The administration has launched a major financial commitment to Hokie athletics, a new head football coach is expected to bring a haul of top-flight talent with him from Penn State and, to kick things off, an anonymous fan stepped up last month with a record-setting $20 million donation.

Yet it remains to be seen if all of that will be enough to fulfill Tech’s ambition of competing with top-tier schools that have seemingly unlimited resources to invest in the post-amateur era of collegiate sports.

A court settlement last year was supposed to have brought some order to the wild-west world of Division 1 athletics. For the first time, schools were allowed to share revenue with student-athletes, but the amount per school was capped at $20.5 million a year. But the agreement has done nothing to tame the cost of “name, image and likeness” payments.

Atlantic Coast Conference members like Virginia Tech have mostly stood on the sidelines and watched as a small number of name-brand teams set the market value. 

Last week, Texas Tech inked ex-University of Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby to a reportedly $5 million deal. The school, flush with West Texas oil boosters, bragged about the deal in a billboard that lit up New York’s Times Square.

Texas Tech, which rode a gusher of NIL money to this year’s College Football Playoff, has budgeted $35 million in combined revenue sharing and NIL payments to athletes in the 2025-26 school year, according to the Athletic.

There’s no way to know how Virginia Tech stacks up.

Officials in Blacksburg have provided few details about its football finances, including how it spends public funds provided by taxpayers and fees extracted from students. Tech is not an outlier when it comes to secrecy; colleges and universities fear that sharing information could provide an unfair advantage to their on-field opponents. 

Reporters in North Carolina have used state open-records laws to determine how other ACC schools are distributing their $20.5 million in shared revenue. 

In Virginia, however, universities have taken a unified stand in refusing to release records related to revenue sharing of public funds. Virginia Tech and other universities have used an expansive interpretation of a “scholastic records” exemption in state open government laws to withhold copies of revenue-sharing agreements or payments, even in cases when news outlets have requested the redaction of all names or other personally identifiable information.

“Even with student names redacted individual student-athletes may be identified,” the Virginia Tech FOIA office responded to a Cardinal News open-records request. “Therefore, the requested records are considered scholastic records concerning identifiable individuals. Accordingly, your request is denied.”

In December, Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski agreed via email to provide a general breakdown showing that 75% of shared revenue went to members of the football team, a higher percentage than at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University.

Getting accurate numbers about the value of NIL deals received by Virginia Tech football players is even harder to come by. When the settlement was announced, there was anticipation that the details of any NIL deal valued at $600 or more would be released as part of a new agency set up to make sure the terms reflected market value.

The College Sports Commission, however, has released only a top-level report on the total number of deals approved and the value. The one-page document has no information about the number of deals for any school, much less information about individual NIL arrangements.

For several weeks, Cardinal News sought to schedule a follow-up interview with Owczarski about the finances of Virginia Tech football. His office eventually said it will not make him available. “University leadership is not available for interviews on this topic.”

The lack of official information has given rise to publications that have developed formulas to place an NIL value on highly touted players. Here is what On3 Media has to say about two recent Virginia Tech portal commits:

• Ethan Grunkemeyer, 6-foot-2-inch, 207-pound quarterback from Lewis Center, Ohio. Grunkemeyer started the final six regular-season games for Penn State last season and led the Nittany Lions to a 22-10 victory over Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl. He has three years of eligibility left. On3 Media estimates Grunkemeyer’s NIL value at $783,000.
• Javion Hilson, 6-foot-4-inch, 240-pound defensive end from Cocoa Beach, Florida. Hilson appeared in three games last season with Missouri. Hilson will arrive in Blacksburg with four years of eligibility remaining. On3 Media estimates Hilson’s NIL value at $419,000. 

There’s no way to know if Virginia Tech paid more or less than the On3 Media estimates. 

Kelly Woolwine, the CEO of Triumph NIL, who for several years acted as Virginia Tech’s “defacto general manager” handling negotiations with players and their families, said he learned from experience that “99 percent of what you hear” about NIL values is untrue.

“On the flip side, truth may be stranger than fiction,” Woolwine quipped in a rare interview on the Virginia Tech Sideline podcast in December 2024.

One thing is certain: last fall, many among the Hokie faithful believed the football program had lost its way.

“What was once a great program competing for championships is now a laughingstock,” wrote Robert Irby in “Sons of Saturday,” a website dedicated to Hokie fandom.

Virginia Tech football hit a low in September after a 0-3 start, ending with a 45-25 blowout at the hands of Old Dominion University in Lane Stadium. After the game, Virginia Tech fired head coach Brent Pry.

Two weeks after Pry’s exit, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors held a special meeting to approve “Invest to Win,” a campaign to inject an additional $229 million into Virginia Tech athletics over the next four years. Figures released by the board show that about half of the funds would come from donations, while $21.3 million would be generated by an increase in student fees. 

“Today, we are stepping up to compete, and we ask our loyal fans and generous donors to step forward with us,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands.

In November, fans also cheered news about the hiring of head football coach James Franklin, whom Big Ten powerhouse Penn State had dismissed mid-season. (In an unorthodox twist, Franklin announced he would retain Pry — with whom he had coached at Vanderbilt and Penn State — as his defensive coordinator.)

The coaching change so far has led to a huge net gain for Virginia Tech’s roster. About a half dozen players left the team when Pry was fired, but Franklin has brought talent with him from Penn State.

For instance, Franklin was hired on Nov. 17, a little more than two weeks before top high school players would announce where they would enroll in 2026. In short order, Franklin convinced 11 recruits who had committed to play for him in Happy Valley to change their minds and follow him to Blacksburg. 

As a result, Virginia Tech assembled a 2026 recruiting class that ranked fifth in the ACC, behind Miami, Florida State, North Carolina and Clemson, according to 247 Sports. 

There was more good news on Dec. 15, when Virginia Tech announced that an anonymous donor had agreed to give a record $20 million gift to the athletic department. 

“We are deeply grateful for this extraordinary and timely gift,” Sands said. “Doing more with less, while a testament to the talent of our staff and student athletes, is no longer an option.”

The real test begins this week, as Virginia Tech competes with other schools in a NIL bidding war in the transfer portal. 

Coach Franklin has imported a member of his Penn State staff, Andy Frank, to serve as general manager and assemble the roster for the 2026 version of the Hokies. 

His predecessor, Woolwine, said one of the vexing challenges in major college football today is managing players’ expectations as compensation goes up year after year.

“You’re going to have a program that is going to bring in a guy for $700,000,” Woolwine said in the December 24 podcast, “and on the other side of the line from him is a guy who has been slaving away at that same university for $75,000 a year. How happy is he going to be when he sees that?” 

Woolwine said compensation is by far the biggest locker room distraction in the history of college sports. “It’s bigger than girls, and drugs and partying,” he said.

Players’ concerns about where they stand in compensation can lead to negativity in locker rooms of every major program. “They think their school or their organization was holding out on ‘em, taking advantage of ‘em, sandbagging ‘em. They are very bitter about it,” Woolwine said.

The transfer portal has made it easy for disgruntled players to seek more money and/or playing time elsewhere. This has made it harder for coaches to develop players over time. Underclassmen who have been working toward playing time can find themselves knocked down the depth chart when a school signs players from the portal.

Last season, for instance, only eight of 28 seniors on the Virginia Tech football team played their entire careers in Blacksburg, according to a Cardinal News analysis.

Woolwine said the goal is to find players who are in Blacksburg because they love Virginia Tech. “We don’t have the money to buy our way through this,” Woolwine said in December 2024.

The question remains whether today’s “Invest to Win” will generate the resources that will make it possible for Hokie football to again compete at the highest level. 

The loftiness of Virginia Tech’s goal was reflected in a last-minute edit to the goal of the $229 million infusion to athletics. Instead of wanting to be competitive against the ACC (considered the weakest of the Power Four conferences), Virginia Tech expressed a desire to compete with “the best institutions nationwide.”

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Rutgers football legend Leonte Carroo is suing Rutgers University over the use of his Name, Image, and Likeness from when he was playing in college, according to an article written by Brian Fonseca of Nj.com/NJAdvancedMedia. Carroo’s lawsuit claims that he is entitled to back payments for the money he generated for the university throughout his college career. The lawsuit values those figures between 2.8 and 3 million dollars.

Carroo and his team originally filed the lawsuit in October. In December, Rutgers countered and tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that the statute of limitations had long passed and that several courts from around the country had already unanimously denied the type of NIL claim that Carroo’s team is making. On January 9th, Carroo’s legal team filed a brief meant to argue that the university’s dismissal should be denied.

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According to the article by Fonseca, Carroo’s team gave Rutgers a formal demand letter in June seeking compensation for the unauthorized use of his NIL. The university did not provide such compensation, which led to the lawsuit.

The House vs. NCAA settlement granted back payment to college athletes who were in school between June 2016 and 2024. Carroo’s playing at Rutgers career falls just outside that, as he played from 2012-2015. Carroo’s legal team is arguing that just because he falls outside the period given, it does not take away from the fact that Rutgers unjustly profited from his time as a player.

Carroo was one of the most well-known players at Rutgers while he was playing. He currently holds the receiving touchdowns record in school history by a wide margin, and he was one of the faces of the team when they first entered the Big Ten. Carroo and his legal team argue that some sort of compensation is in order for his level of stardom.

If the courts side with Carroo in this case, it has the potential to open up a whole can of worms across college athletics. It would lay the groundwork and encourage other former athletes from other schools to sue their own school for the same reason. Similar cases to this, including players from other college programs, have been dismissed or denied already across the board. It remains to be seen what will come of this lawsuit in particular.

A link to the original article by Fonseca can be found here.

Former Minnesota safety Koi Perich has committed to play for head coach Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks, On3 has learned. Perich was one of the top available players in the NCAA transfer portal, proving to be a massive win for Oregon. It’s the second straight year Lanning has snagged an elite safety from a Big Ten foe.

Perich is a four-star prospect per the On3 Industry Transfer Portal Rankings. He also comes in as the No. 12 overall player. At the time of his commitment, only Missouri‘s Damon Wilson ranks higher on the list of available guys. Now, the No. 1 safety is off the board and heading to Eugene.

Texas Tech was the other program battling Oregon for Perich’s eventual signature. It’s no secret how aggressive the Red Raiders can get in the transfer portal. Especially for defensive players, being a staple of the 2025 roster. But similar to the College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup between the two, Oregon came out on top.

Perich played in 26 games during his time at Minnesota, turning into one of the best defensive backs in the Big Ten. He recorded 128 tackles, 5.5 tackles for a loss, and one sack. The stats when dropping back in coverage are just as good, snagging six interceptions, five passes defended, and even forcing two fumbles.

Oregon will be looking for a whole lot more of the same. Last portal cycle saw the Ducks land Dillon Thieneman from Purdue, setting the blueprint for what Perich’s time in Eugene might look like. But there was always thought to be a ton of potential with Perich.

Looking back at his high school recruitment, Perich played at Esko (MN) Lincoln Secondary, where he was a four-star prospect. He was the No. 58 overall recruit in the 2024 cycle, according to the Rivals Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Minnesota listed Perich as a sophomore on his official roster bio during the 2025 season. If he wishes to use them, two years of eligibility remain moving forward. While Oregon might be hoping they just snagged a multi-year player, you have to imagine the NFL Draft will be a serious consideration this time next year.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.