Given its impact on the world of college recruiting in this era, NIL is one of those issues that is talked about a lot, but little is actually said about.
In fairness to those on the inside, there are very good reasons why details of it are rarely discussed.
Notre Dame general manager Mike Martin acknowledged NIL itself is still something he’s trying to get comfortable with in his first year in South Bend after spending multiple years with the Detroit Lions.
“When you're sort of dealing with men at the NFL level, it's sort of, ‘Hey, everything is business, and you earn a check, you earn a contract,’” Martin said during Wednesday’s National Signing Day press conference.
“But at the college level, we connect on so many different levels. It's connecting with the young men, helping to develop them, build the relationships. So sometimes it makes some of the negotiations over NIL difficult.”
And, there is often - but not always - a disconnect between the person you’re recruiting and the person you’re negotiating with.
“You're dealing with agents who some of them are the greatest in the world to work with,” Martin said. “There's some who aren't as easy to work with. Sorry if I don't want to call out anyone. I might have to work with a lot of them.
“And then, there's families that represent themselves, and then there's even young men that represent themselves. I just think you find yourself constantly trying to adjust to who you're working with.”
Martin said transparency has proven to be the best way to engage.
“Being up front, being clear with them helped us to sort of navigate that space, but it's still something we're working through,” he said. “There's challenges you have to have, there's contractual language in there that they're not always receptive to, so there's a lot of back and forth and redlining.”
Martin also offered some insight into how he and the staff go about trying to determine the approximate NIL value for each player; noting that it doesn’t begin on the individual player level.
It starts with determining the overall budget for the class and then allocating portions of that budget by position. But in the end, it’s all subject to change.
“When you get into these negotiations and conversations, it sort of goes where it goes and sometimes your percentages can get a little off trying to land certain targets,” he acknowledged. “I think it's a good baseline, a good starting point, and that's sort of how we set the initial valuation.
“We also obviously evaluate the players' talent and there's sort of a little bit of a tiering within positions and so we're able to sort of tier players within positions. I will say that I think we hit on top-tier players at every position.”
But understanding Notre Dame’s budget is the easy part.
“What's interesting, what's tough, because there's not a lot of shared information as it relates to what guys are making or what's Alabama paying guys, what's Oklahoma paying,” he said. “You don't really get that information, so you have to kind of fall back on what you know.”
One thing he does know is that he’s been provided enough ammunition in terms of an NIL budget to sign the kind of class the Irish did on Wednesday.
“I absolutely think it's competitive,” Martin said. “I think we are positioned well to do what we want to do and what we need to do.
“We understand that we may never be the highest-paying team or the highest bidder, but it is important to us to be competitive. I mentioned this before. I think we offer so many other things that we don't necessarily have to have the same budget, but we can't be too far off either.
“If we want to continue to be competitive on the field, we're going to have to continue to sort of push the number, but I'll say that I think right now we are positioned well for that.”
