I feel like there is a lot of confusion on where things stand with GT and NIL for hoops and football so I want to clear up some things. Everything is relative to where you are positioning yourself. Right now GT has the TechWay and they are ahead of their goals (the numbers are quite guarded) for the year and they've made a lot of progress raising money, especially for football and hoops.
As I said before there was money banked for both sports and they've since raised additional money. The first goal is to have a consistently funded NIL program to both retain talent and have something to offer transfers. You can level up from there based on the support for the program and the likely ROI (i.e. winning) that donors get.
So as it relates to football. GT has money to distribute to players, but they are not going to go land Colin Simmons for example the #1 player in the country in recruiting or Sam Hartman the #1 QB in the portal because those kids are commanding extremely large amounts of NIL dollars. This is literally no different than it was in 2005, 2015 or 2019. GT isn't fishing in those holes and won't be. The majority of transfers command far less than you all would think on the open market but as I've said elsewhere specific positions can command more like linemen in football. The example I will use that is 100% real is a kid GT tried to lure out of the portal as a lineman. Two schools are currently in a bidding war up to $250k+ now as of yesterday for this player (I know the guy running the NIL for one of the schools involved elsewhere and he was lamenting the bidding war to me yesterday). GT was out of it because that is both insane for the type of player this kid is and also not how they want to operate with NIL. However Key has money to use wisely, it is a budget like a salary cap. Every coach would love more, but it is workable. Not everyone on scholarship gets significant NIL money, but they are also still getting things like cost of attendance and then what was intended to be the actual NIL experience, things like the TIVO deal or specific smaller deals like the french fry thing that Zeek Biggers had. There are microtransactions that drive the majority of the NIL deals across college sports.
Stoudamire flat out in his intro presser explained this straight up, he has a NIL budget to work with aka salary cap just like he worked with in the NBA. Both Stoudamire and Key have been extremely active in raising money with the spring game being a prime example. Stoudamire visited all the suite holders for example to visit with boosters there and Key held multiple events and they had a shared NIL event after the spring game that I've referenced a few times. Stoudamire has been clear on his pitch and vision to kids and he has been successful using his resources to add some very good talent in the last week to the roster as evidenced by the addition of Amaree Abram today.
However, there is also a cap so there are guys like Hunter Dickinson who are commanding in the million-dollar range that are going to be out of budget for GT. The center spot is the OL/DL of hoops and those guys are commanding the highest NIL right now on the marketplace so a guy like Russel Tchewe from USF has a potential bidding war with Auburn, Georgia, and Georgetown going per my sources close to Tchewe.
Here is the thing with hoops. The pool of guys commanding big money is very specific and those guys are going to the usual suspects that spent major money. Same with HS recruits, same kids are going to place that were paying under the table and now are just paying above the table.
GT is in the middle ground with a real NIL budget now, but it is a budget like any of us have. So Key and Stoudamire have to be wise with how they use it.
I hope this clears up some confusion. I think people confused me saying don't expect GT to suddenly land stud after stud in hoops or not wanting to spend their entire NIL budget on one kid with being broke. Stoudamire and Key have their individual plans and how they'd like to see the NIL money distributed and of course, this is the disclaimer, the TechWay distributes the money, not the GTAA, and it is run independently of the GTAA and the coaches.
As I said before there was money banked for both sports and they've since raised additional money. The first goal is to have a consistently funded NIL program to both retain talent and have something to offer transfers. You can level up from there based on the support for the program and the likely ROI (i.e. winning) that donors get.
So as it relates to football. GT has money to distribute to players, but they are not going to go land Colin Simmons for example the #1 player in the country in recruiting or Sam Hartman the #1 QB in the portal because those kids are commanding extremely large amounts of NIL dollars. This is literally no different than it was in 2005, 2015 or 2019. GT isn't fishing in those holes and won't be. The majority of transfers command far less than you all would think on the open market but as I've said elsewhere specific positions can command more like linemen in football. The example I will use that is 100% real is a kid GT tried to lure out of the portal as a lineman. Two schools are currently in a bidding war up to $250k+ now as of yesterday for this player (I know the guy running the NIL for one of the schools involved elsewhere and he was lamenting the bidding war to me yesterday). GT was out of it because that is both insane for the type of player this kid is and also not how they want to operate with NIL. However Key has money to use wisely, it is a budget like a salary cap. Every coach would love more, but it is workable. Not everyone on scholarship gets significant NIL money, but they are also still getting things like cost of attendance and then what was intended to be the actual NIL experience, things like the TIVO deal or specific smaller deals like the french fry thing that Zeek Biggers had. There are microtransactions that drive the majority of the NIL deals across college sports.
Stoudamire flat out in his intro presser explained this straight up, he has a NIL budget to work with aka salary cap just like he worked with in the NBA. Both Stoudamire and Key have been extremely active in raising money with the spring game being a prime example. Stoudamire visited all the suite holders for example to visit with boosters there and Key held multiple events and they had a shared NIL event after the spring game that I've referenced a few times. Stoudamire has been clear on his pitch and vision to kids and he has been successful using his resources to add some very good talent in the last week to the roster as evidenced by the addition of Amaree Abram today.
However, there is also a cap so there are guys like Hunter Dickinson who are commanding in the million-dollar range that are going to be out of budget for GT. The center spot is the OL/DL of hoops and those guys are commanding the highest NIL right now on the marketplace so a guy like Russel Tchewe from USF has a potential bidding war with Auburn, Georgia, and Georgetown going per my sources close to Tchewe.
Here is the thing with hoops. The pool of guys commanding big money is very specific and those guys are going to the usual suspects that spent major money. Same with HS recruits, same kids are going to place that were paying under the table and now are just paying above the table.
GT is in the middle ground with a real NIL budget now, but it is a budget like any of us have. So Key and Stoudamire have to be wise with how they use it.
I hope this clears up some confusion. I think people confused me saying don't expect GT to suddenly land stud after stud in hoops or not wanting to spend their entire NIL budget on one kid with being broke. Stoudamire and Key have their individual plans and how they'd like to see the NIL money distributed and of course, this is the disclaimer, the TechWay distributes the money, not the GTAA, and it is run independently of the GTAA and the coaches.
