Here’s What QB Gets Paid

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Marcel Reed of the Texas A&M Aggies.

When the Texas A&M Aggies host the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday, the game will mark only the seventh time the two traditional college football powerhouses have faced off, and only the fourth time in the regular season.

The schools have been playing college football since turn of the 20th century, Notre Dame since 1899, Texas A&M since 1903. The Irish have won 13 recognized national championships, the Aggies have won two (though none since 1939). And yet, their football teams never met on the gridiron until January 1, 1988, when they were brought together in the Cotton Bowl.

After the Aggies won the initial meeting, two more Cotton Bowls followed, in 1993 and 1994, with Notre Dame winning both, before their first scheduled games in 2000 and 2001. But that was it, until 2014 when the teams announced that they would play another two-game, home-and-home series — a decade down the road.

Aggies QB Has Unique NIL Arrangement

By the time of the first game, won by Notre Dame at College Station on August 31, 2024, the entire landscape of college football had undergone a series of seismic shifts.

Perhaps the most significant change has been that, as the result of a 2021 United States Supreme Court decision, college athletes may now get paid — though to do so they need to sell the rights to their “name, image and likeness,” in what are appropriately known as NIL deals.

Texas A&M’s redshirt sophomore quarterback Marcel Reed has one of the most unusual NIL deals in college football. Here are the details.

Who is Marcel Reed?

First, some background on the Texas A&M signal caller — starting with the fact that in his first non-redshirt season he threw for 1,864 yards in 11 games, completing 61.3 percent of his passes with 15 touchdowns and six interceptions.

At the private Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, Reed was named his state’s “Mr. Football” in 2023 and was rated as a four-star college prospect, initially signing a commitment letter to play at Ole Miss.

But late in 2022, he gave in to coach Jimbo Fisher’s relentless recruitment efforts and switched his commitment to Texas A&M — even though he would be joining a squad with a five-deep QB depth chart.

Of the five quarterbacks on the Aggies’ roster to start 2023, Reed is the only one left.

What’s So Special About His NIL Deal?

Earlier this year, Reed signed a contract with Houston-based ENG Aviation, a private jet operator that specializes in air transport of donated organs intended for life-saving transplants.

Reed plans to use the platform from the deal to advocate for organ donation, even meeting with donor families and organ recipients at Houston Methodist Hospital.

“He’s kind, he’s respectful, he’s mature,” said ENG official Kalee Blythe of Reed. “He has huge goals and he wanted to do something that mattered.”

Reed’s Other NIL Contracts

Reed has two other major NIL deals that have been made public, reportedly bringing his earnings this year into the seven-figure range. According to sports business journalist Pete Nakos, as quoted by SI.com, the Aggies quarterback will take in “upwards of $1.5 million this season.”

In August he signed a deal with activewear maker Rhoback, giving him a percentage of Aggies-licensed apparel sold through a special link branded with Reed’s name and offering consumers a 20 percent discount.

Reed and Texas A&M running back Rueben Owens II have also agreed to a deal with the fast food chain Sonic, and will appear in TV commercials for the burger joint that has more than 3,400 locations nationwide.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin