Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Look no further than us paying Jimbo Fisher $77 million NOT to coach football. Crazy, stupid money. 

yup, not many 5 stars on the roster

coaching

The Mark Cubin stuff is overblown. It's not like they are stealing the cream of the crop out from under the noses of the blue bloods. They are finding under the radar guys that fit their system.

And it's not like Cuban just cut a big check Year 1.  I'm sure he gave some, but after seeing what they were doing, and knowing he was getting good ROI, he contributed more and more.  Too many coaches walk in the door and expect the boosters to instantly open the checkbooks.  Prove you can overachieve with a $10 million roster, and then lets see what you can do with $20 million...$30 million...etc...

I'm a successful engineer. But I'm much more interested in buying my own Ferrari, not buying one for my alma mater

Which is IMHO one of the problems that a lot of schools like Purdue or Wisconsin have. They're not football factories like tOSU. Alumni care, but they don't care THAT much that they'll impoverish themselves in order to make their team successful...

This (above) relates to this (below):

To run a 30 million dollar NIL program you need about 100 wealthy alumni to pony up $300,000 each. Now maybe I’m over estimating how much rich alumni any given school has, but you can do the math. Say you have a couple billionaires, each ponies up $5 million. Now you split the money between 100 rich guys at $20 MM. 

It really doesn’t matter, some of these guys are multi-billionaires. They can pay out 1-5 million like you and I pony up $1,000 or even 100.

I think what @Gigem was getting at is that there is more than one way to skin this cat.  If you have a Cuban/Knight who individually gives $30M then viola, you can build a contender.  Alternatively 100 Millionaires giving $300k each gets you the same $30M or you might get there with his example of a couple billionaires giving $5M each and then 100 millionaires at $200k each.  

My take on it is this:
I'm reasonably successful but I couldn't give an amount of money large enough to get any kind of 'say' in running the program.  Ie, realistically, if Phil Knight calls the Oregon AD or if Cuban calls the Indiana AD the AD probably answers that call even before he'd answer a call from the University President  Phil Knight at Oregon and Cuban at Indiana realistically run the show.  You have to give MAJOR cash to get there.  The millionaires that give $200-300k get access and I'm sure whatever perks the Athletic Department can arrange but they don't RUN the department.  

So if I'm a potential $2K donor or for that matter $200k donor what am I really getting for my contribution?  Realistically even $200k isn't all that material to the overall health of tOSU's NIL.  It isn't like Cuban/Knight who can look at Indiana/Oregon's success and basically say "I did that".  

As much as I love Ohio State and as big of a Buckeye fan as I am, if I suddenly learned that I was the next of kin to some billionaire who just passed away I think I'd be more likely to be like Michael Dell:

Michael Dell doesn't give a dime to UT athletics, instead he'd rather support and enrich the community by building hospitals and funding med schools.

Maybe not "not a dime" but I don't think I'd be writing six figure checks let alone checks with multiple commas to the tOSU AD.  

At the end of the day I'd like to make the world a better place and giving the money to the tOSU Medical (James Cancer Center) might contribute to a cure for cancer which has a much bigger impact on the world than whether or not Ohio State wins the 2026 NC.  

What I think that may be ignoring is that it's not 100 millionaires giving $300K each.

It's 100 millionaires giving $300K each EVERY YEAR.

$20-30M/year are annual numbers.

How sustainable is this, really?

Sounds like Purdue should have asked one of their astronauts to grab some moon minerals while they were there

Sounds like Purdue should have asked one of their astronauts to grab some moon minerals while they were there

I'm guessing those jerks at NASA would have just kept them for themselves...

How sustainable is this, really?

Well, hasn’t it been going on since the 80’s and 90’s ?  

The same people writing jumbo checks for $10 million a year are the same ones guaranteeing Elko $11 MM a year. 

One of our big boosters, Tony Buzbe, said we’ve got more money than brains.