Carson Beck’s $4 million payout for nothing continues to change the NFL game

If it’s true that former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck will get $4 million in NIL money to play at the University of Miami in 2025, then numbers like this will prompt more and more elite college football players to do what the NFL has encouraged them to do . (possibly as a service to the free farm system) for years.

Stay in school.

Although it is clearly not a school. As if it had been like that for years. It’s work. And it was commercial for everyone except the people who fed it. Not long ago, everyone associated with presenting a college football game, from the school president to the guy selling old-fashioned popcorn, was paid a salary — except the players.

Now the curtain has come down. the Interface It has been obliterated. College football is professional football. And a college football career pays much better than most rookie contracts in the first years.

For 2024 first-round picks, only the top 16 players received four-year contracts worth more than $4 million annually. Thus, by staying in college football for another year or two, a player whose stock may not be (or ever be) very high can cash in a lot of cash, while still gaining playing experience, before heading to the NFL. American.

The final analysis of the player goes like this. Should I take the money available now, or should I go to the NFL and start the three-year period toward a second market-level contract? This assumes that the player will be good enough to earn a second contract at market level – and that the team drafting him will be willing to pay him after three years and will not sit him out through the fifth-year option and then perhaps the franchise will play a -tag game.

There’s another angle that will eventually come up on draft day. As more and more quality players exit their professional college careers into professional football with more and more money in the bank, they will be better equipped to refuse to sign a contract with a dysfunctional team and sit out a full season, if they must. Which gives them real leverage to tell a team not to draft them, and if they do, to trade them immediately.

Yes, this strategy continues to risk angering fans and some in the media who are highly critical of players making business decisions. At some point, that resistance will go the way of the teeth-gnashing that occurred when draft-eligible players stopped playing in ballgames.

First, someone has to do it. That last happened in 2004, where Eli Manning avoided the Chargers. Before that, John Elway resisted going to the Colts in 1983. With such a limited sample size, the NFL’s version of Halley’s Comet is set to resurface in 2025, 21 years after the last one.

It must happen. Many careers (especially quarterbacks) have been derailed if they have not been ruined by landing with a bad owner, a bad front office, and/or a bad roster. Some of the best quarterbacks in 2025 (Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith) had that experience to start their careers. The teams responsible for it (the Jets and Browns) may look to draft a quarterback in the first round this year.

The NIL explosion helps avoid a player’s NFL career faltering early, by giving college players more experience before heading to the NFL (and playing time has clearly helped the rapid development of Commanders’ quarterback Jayden Daniels and Broncos quarterback Bo Knicks) and more of a war chest that will allow them to push against the NFL’s industrial complex project.

It’s not personal. It’s work. And NFL teams have been fine making business decisions for decades. It’s time for players to make business decisions.