can completely transform a school's ability to pay players NIL money. I just subscribed to CougConnect, so am now monthly contributing for the first time to a BYU collective. But this isn't even a drop in the bucket in the bigger scheme of things with NIL. There would have to be many, many thousands of monthly donors to even make a small dent in the total amount needed, with how things are currently going in college athletics.

It really depends on the major donors. One or two large donors can quickly push a school's total amount available for NIL into the millions.
According to reports, Phil Knight has donated over one billion to Oregon over the past decade.

Other famous and notable donors in the hundreds of millions to universities are:
-T. Boone Pickens at Ok.State
-Warren Buffett at Creighton
-John Tyson of Tyson Foods at Arkansas (Arkansas now has Tyson and Jerry Jones as billionaire backers).

I found this article about Top 25 football teams and their biggest donors/boosters. Many have billionaires funneling money to the program. Texas A&M and Oregon have over $800-$900 million in their coffers. Just crazy.


So it really depends on these big money donors to keep up in the arms race. Because BYU is paying north of $4m yearly to KY's salary, it seems that the NIL account will also increase substantially. If Ryan Smith can get a couple of other LDS billionaires or multi-millionaires on board, then I could see BYU being able to mostly compete and retain top players and lure upper-echelon recruits. If BYU is going to compete in the game the big money needs to come in. Smaller donations in large numbers are important, but not nearly as beneficial as the big money coming from a small handful of people.

It's really a travesty what has happened to college athletics. It's all about handing over the bag of money at this point. No nuance or subtlety at all. Case in point is Jerry Jones offering double NIL $$$ to any Kentucky player in the portal who comes to Arkansas. That's just straight-up pay-for-play and it sets a ridiculous precedent where it can turn into a public bidding war for top players.