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

What good is TV money if there is no chance to compete - causing TV money to diminish?

This could very well happen - eventually - sooner than later, IMHO - fans will get bored when the same 4-5 teams are in the finals every year. Choosing not to watch repeated snooze fests. Even Bama,LSU,Clemson don't have the $$$ bank rolled Bagmen to keep up with Georgia,tOSU supporters. Whose pockets aren't nearly as deep as UTs/Ms/A&Ms and maybe The Ducks but even that could end when Knight go toes up.

We know corporates i.e Networks will fudge numbers and facts to push their product but sooner or later they'll have to catch fish or cut bait. Look no further than that hack Stephen Colbert or the auto industry painting pretty pictures. They are still trying to hang on to their arificially inflated high prices (or ratings) as they are taking a financial bath as their reserve lots they hide from the public are overflowing. They are going to have to bite the bullet.

If you're looking for a new ride and specially a good used model wait until late this fall and the 1st couple of months in '26 analyts expect a big price correction.

Yes.

The NIL monies come from "outside" still, correct? 

Not sure what you mean.  There are a few different kinds of NIL money.  

There's the collectives, which I think most people are referring to when they talk about NIL money with respect to a specific school.  These are booster-led organizations that essentially funnel money to recruits and current players for roster creation and roster management.  These aren't really what was intended with the legalization of NIL for college athletes, but they're an unavoidable consequence.

Then there's "real" NIL where someone like Arch Manning is licensing his name, image, and likeness, to a corporation like Red Bull, for advertising purposes.  Red Bull would be willing to make this contract with Arch regardless of where he went to school, so this is more along the lines of the "intended purpose" of NIL.

Then there's the local Austin car dealership, that is happy to get the UT place kicker or second string RB to do a little bit of promotion in exchange for money or a nice lease deal on a Ford F150.  This is also along the lines of the "intended purpose" of NIL and while it is not school specific, universities in larger metro areas will tend to have more of these kinds of opportunities for their players.

Outside of the university/athletic department, so $20 million is not part of the AD's budget ...

$20 Million is what every school is allowed to share directly with "student"-athletes today.

Yeah, there's the $20.5M per year (with plans to escalate over time), from the House Settlement.  If a university wants, it can pay up to $20.5M directly to athletes, in any sport. This comes from the school athletics budget, and 2025/26 is the first year it has been allowed.

Then there's NIL money outside of that.  Some comes from boosters in the form of collectives, some comes from "legitimate" corporations that genuinely want to use the name, image, or likeness, of a specific player, for advertising/marketing purposes.  This is not part of the school athletic budget.