The post Insider reveals NIL move that won over Texas Tech’s 5-star commit appeared first on ClutchPoints.

Texas Tech football launched the biggest fireworks on the recruiting end for Fourth of July. Felix Ojo spurned multiple powers for the Red Raiders Friday. Becoming a rare five-star commit for the Lubbock university on the college football recruiting trail.

Advertisement

But how were the Red Raiders able to coax the dominating tackle? Especially with Texas, Michigan, Florida even defending national champion Ohio State all in the final mix for him?

Texas Tech turned to NIL money to convince Ojo that Lubbock is the place for him. The Athletic helped pull back the curtain on the Red Raiders courting Ojo.

Ojo agreed to a three-year, $2.3 million revenue-sharing contract, The Athletic revealed on Saturday. But the outlet also delivered clarity on one reported contract involving the Mansfield, Texas talent.

How much Felix Ojo could earn after joining Texas Tech recruiting class

Ojo’s agent Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management spearheaded the NIL process for the newest Red Raider.

Advertisement

Turns out there was a contract figure that needed to be clarified by The Athletic.

“ESPN reported on Friday that Ojo was receiving a three-year deal worth $5.1 million, according to his agent, Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management. Shelby confirmed those figures to The Athletic on Saturday, but three Texas Tech sources refuted that number, with two confirming that Ojo is scheduled to receive an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool,” the report reads.

There’s additional figures attached to Ojo. He received a verbal agreement “that can escalate the total value of the contract into the $5 million range.” However, that figure surfaces “if there were a large jump in the revenue sharing cap for schools or if there is minimal regulation of schools’ adhering to the cap.”

Ojo isn’t the only massive recruiting win. Four-star safety Donovan Webb spurned Michigan for Texas Tech on Wednesday. Webb originally was favored to land with the Wolverines per multiple outlets. Texas Tech is now 25th overall in the national recruiting rankings per 247Sports for the 2026 class.

Related: 5-star WR shockingly picks Syracuse over Michigan football

Related: Georgia football way-too-early bold predictions for 2025 season

Texas Tech took the NiJaree Canady NIL approach with 2026 five-star OT Felix Ojo. But paying big, guaranteed money to a proven softball pitching transfer who can single-handedly control games as compared to paying big, guaranteed money to an incoming freshman offensive tackle is a totally different kind of risk, especially in the new era of revenue sharing with student-athletes.

Tech is paying Ojo $2.325 million – guaranteed – for the next three years (an average of $775,000 per season), with a verbal agreement that Tech will renegotiate up to $5 million total if NIL money goes back to a Wild West setup, according to Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports.

Additional info on Texas Tech’s deal with new five-star offensive tackle commit Felix Ojo:

A source tells @cbssports it’s a three-year deal averaging $775,000 a year with a verbal understanding that Tech will renegotiate up to $5 million if things shift back to a Wild West setup https://t.co/YjrV9oQdSy pic.twitter.com/T2MqDjOrKQ

— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) July 4, 2025

This is the kind of high-risk, high-reward precedent Tech set with Canady, who got $1,050,024 to sign with Tech after her sophomore season at Stanford and helped Tech finish runner-up to Texas in the championship final of the Women’s College World Series last month.

Canady’s record deal for a softball player was staggering but came with managed risk considering she had already earned NFCA National Freshman of the Year at Stanford in 2023 and followed that up by being named USA Softball’s Collegiate Player of the Year in 2024 all while leading the Cardinal to two straight WCWS appearances.

A guaranteed deal of this size for an incoming freshman football player in the revenue-sharing era of college athletics is a significant risk and will undoubtedly lead to more agents for high-end high school recruits demanding big, multi-year guarantees.

Team USA’s U19 team continued their dominant run in the FIBA World Cup on Saturday in Switzerland. Now Kentucky guard Jasper Johnson will get a change to play for a gold medal on Sunday in this international event.

Let’s just say it was a long night for New Zealand. On Fourth of July weekend, USA basketball continued to roll with a 120-61 victory. We nearly got a Team USA by 90 result.

Jasper Johnson finished the blowout win with 14 points on 11 field goal attempts with three three-point field goals in 18 minutes on the floor. Team USA was plus-12 with Jasper on the floor.

Texas Tech football launched the biggest fireworks on the recruiting end for Fourth of July. Felix Ojo spurned multiple powers for the Red Raiders Friday. Becoming a rare five-star commit for the Lubbock university on the college football recruiting trail.

But how were the Red Raiders able to coax the dominating tackle? Especially with Texas, Michigan, Florida even defending national champion Ohio State all in the final mix for him?

Texas Tech turned to NIL money to convince Ojo that Lubbock is the place for him. The Athletic helped pull back the curtain on the Red Raiders courting Ojo.

Ojo agreed to a three-year, $2.3 million revenue-sharing contract, The Athletic revealed on Saturday. But the outlet also delivered clarity on one reported contract involving the Mansfield, Texas talent.

How much Felix Ojo could earn after joining Texas Tech recruiting class

Ojo’s agent Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management spearheaded the NIL process for the newest Red Raider.

Turns out there was a contract figure that needed to be clarified by The Athletic.

“ESPN reported on Friday that Ojo was receiving a three-year deal worth $5.1 million, according to his agent, Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management. Shelby confirmed those figures to The Athletic on Saturday, but three Texas Tech sources refuted that number, with two confirming that Ojo is scheduled to receive an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool,” the report reads.

There’s additional figures attached to Ojo. He received a verbal agreement “that can escalate the total value of the contract into the $5 million range.” However, that figure surfaces “if there were a large jump in the revenue sharing cap for schools or if there is minimal regulation of schools’ adhering to the cap.”

Ojo isn’t the only massive recruiting win. Four-star safety Donovan Webb spurned Michigan for Texas Tech on Wednesday. Webb originally was favored to land with the Wolverines per multiple outlets. Texas Tech is now 25th overall in the national recruiting rankings per 247Sports for the 2026 class.

College sports has another before and afterdate.

Before July 1, 2025 – this Tuesday – athletes could make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL) but not be paid directly by their schools. And after July 1, that has changed, making college sports look and feel even more like the pros.

Some of the long-standing differences and caveats still apply. College athletes are not considered employees. Therefore, unlike athletes in the NFL, the NBA, the WNBA, the NHL and MLB, their pay and working conditions were not established through a collective bargaining process. But at least one major change will be familiar to any fan of those professional leagues.

College sports has a (soft) salary cap now. Let’s unpack.

HOW DID THIS COME ABOUT?

At the most practical level, the soft salary cap (or revenue sharing cap) is part of the massive legal settlement approved in early June. Commonly referred to as the House settlement, it consolidated three antitrust cases, all of them challenging past restrictions of college athlete compensation. And in that process, the defendants – the NCAA and the power conferences – agreed to allow schools to share revenue with (or pay) athletes directly for the first time. That officially started Tuesday.

Lawyers for the defendants and plaintiffs settled on an initial annual cap of $20.5 million per school. That is for athletes across sports, though a bulk of the money will go to salaries for football and men’s basketball players. Not every school will spend to the cap, though many power conference programs will. More than 300 Division I schools have opted into the new economic model, meaning they can pay athletes – up to that cap – but also have to abide by new roster limits in each sport. Schools that chose not to opt in are not allowed to pay athletes through revenue sharing. For now, this cap explainer is not relevant to them.

WHY $20.5 MILLION?

The starting cap was calculated by taking 22 percent of the average athletic revenue for power conference schools. In this case, the figures were from the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years. Importantly, only a specific set of revenue streams was considered, which has the attention of the plaintiffs’ attorneys for House. Each year, the settlement will require the NCAA to share the data used to calculate the cap with the plaintiffs’ attorneys. From there, the settlement permits the attorneys to “reasonably audit” the data – and this week, Steve Berman, one of the lead attorneys, told USA Today they are doing just that. In question is whether certain revenue streams were not counted and should be, which could increase the initial number.

Berman told USA Today that he is fine with going ahead with $20.5 million for 2025-26. But if the number were recalculated in an auditing process …

… THAT WOULD BE SIGNIFICANT. WHY?

Great question. Perfect time to ask.

The settlement is a 10-year agreement. The cap will rise and recalculate throughout that span. There will be a 4 percent bump before the second, third, fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth years. There will be a recalculation, using that same 22 percent formula, before the fourth, seventh and 10th years. So if the baseline changed because of an immediate audit of the $20.5 million figure, there could be a trickle-down (or trickle-up?) effect on the initial annual increases.

WHAT COUNTS AS SPENDING TOWARD THE CAP?

Three streams: revenue-sharing money paid to athletes, which will essentially function as salaries; scholarship spending above previous NCAA limits; and other education-related payments, known as Alston money.

Alston money can account for up to $2.5 million per year toward the cap. Same with scholarship spending, though that part is a bit trickier to explain. The settlement permits schools to pay an uncapped amount of scholarship money to a fixed number of athletes across sports. Or in other words: Previous limits on scholarship spending have been replaced by new roster limits, meaning more money distributed to fewer athletes. A football team, for example, can carry a maximum of 105 players and offer 105 full scholarships, if it so chooses. But as far as the $20.5 million cap is concerned, only scholarship money spent above previous NCAA limits – and only up to $2.5 million per year – will count toward it. Confused? Welcome to the life of a longtime college compliance staffer.

WHY HAVE YOU REPEATEDLY REFERRED TO THIS AS A SOFT CAP?

Another great question.

Until this point – before July 1, 2025 – boosters funded five-, six- and seven-figure salaries in football, men’s basketball and, to a lesser extent, women’s basketball and other sports. With rules established by the settlement, the NCAA and the power conferences hope to change that. Any NIL deal that exceeds $600 will have to go through a clearinghouse, which will trigger a review of who is paying and what services they will receive from the athlete, among other factors. The hope, for the leaders of college sports, is to eliminate situations in which an athlete receives $500,000 for a few social media posts.

At the highest levels of the biggest sports, those deals have fueled the NIL economy for the past four years. Donor groups, known as NIL collectives, typically have brokered them. Many legal experts are skeptical that the enforcement efforts would hold up against more antitrust suits.

And throughout the history of college sports, there’s at least one certainty: Motivated rich people will find a way to help their teams win. For that reason – that donors and NIL collectives will help schools spend above the $20.5 million barrier – it feels most responsible to call it a soft cap. The whole system could put at least some athlete payments back under the table, such as when they used to be delivered in McDonald’s bags before the NCAA changed its NIL rules in 2021.Plus, beyond donor money, schools and collectives can still help athletes land brand deals to enhance their income.

At the top of college football and basketball, spending from the revenue-sharing pool will be viewed as a baseline. It will, as ever, take a lot more money to thrive.