We are now through the first six months of the new Name, Image, and Likeness opportunities for college student-athletes. It’s been a wild ride already, and who knows where the journey will end, or how many twists, speed bumps, and hairpin curves we’ll see.
However, one thing is for certain. If you want to make money as a college athlete, Ohio State is apparently the place to be. According to a release from OSU, a total of 220 student-athletes took advantage of 608 NIL opportunities for total compensation totaling $2.98 million. Those three figures are tops in the country according to Opendorse, the cutting-edge services company hired by Ohio State to help its student-athletes with education and resource opportunities to maximize their NIL earning potential.
You have to give credit to the Ohio State program for embracing NIL and getting out in front of it. It rolled out its own platform for student-athletes to help them navigate and understand things prior to everything going in place. Add that to the fact that OSU sits in a top 15 city in the county that’s rabid about college football and continues to grow, and well — the finished product so far has been a slam dunk for the Buckeye program.
And it’s probably only going to get more lucrative.
Ohio State on Monday claimed the No. 1 spot in the NIL earnings rankings.https://t.co/yzd0cFdMP2
— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) January 24, 2022
We don’t yet have numbers available for other programs, but the fact that Ohio State sits on top should be a further selling point for an athletics program that is one of the biggest and most profitable in the country already. You would expect football to reap the most tangible rewards with this knowledge, but clearly, there are more athletes making money than just those tossing a pigskin around.
It’s early in this brave, new world of NIL, but so far Ohio State is setting the bar on how to handle and traverse the journey. We’ll see if it all pans out on the recruiting trail for a program that already attracts some of the best student-athletes in the country.
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