Georgia’s Kirby Smart Says NIL Collectives Are Paying Up to $20K a Month to Recruits

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart asserted that some NIL collectives are spending five figures a month to retain the commitments of prospective recruits.

Smart told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger the cost in some cases is $20,000 monthly. The collectives will request that money back if the recruit winds up signing with another school.

“Teams that are unusually good at recruiting right now are doing it,” the Bulldogs coach said. “Kids are getting money, but if you decommit, you owe that money back. These are high school kids getting money from an entity not affiliated with the university but is a collective of the university.”

Dellenger asked Smart to name the schools to which the collectives he referenced are affiliated. The coach declined to offer specifics but said the programs aren’t SEC members.

This is yet another example of the chaotic landscape that college recruiting has become.

Decomittments have long been part of the process, but now there’s an added cost for collectives that have secured endorsement money for blue-chip recruits. It makes sense for collectives to hedge their bets by paying big sums to players before they arrive and having a mechanism to get that cash back if need be.

The NIL Go clearinghouse will theoretically bring more transparency, with athletes required to report any deals that exceed $600. And yet, Dellenger wrote that “many legal experts believe that the clearinghouse concept will trigger a bevy of legal challenges.”

If fans have learned one thing about college football across multiple generations, it’s that the top schools will always try to get one leg up on the competition. Whatever changes are made to the NIL system, there will be plenty of collectives trying to find loopholes or workarounds in an effort to attract the best talent.