Colorado has now officially completely cut ties with its official NIL collective. The Buffs join a growing trend in Power 4 football with the move.
“We are restructuring our NIL procedures in order to be prepared for the changes to come,” Colorado athletic director Rick George wrote in an email.
Colorado joins teams like UCF, who made headlines when they were the very first team to ditch their NIL collective for the potential of revenue sharing.
Revenue sharing would potentially allow for teams to pay up to $22 million annually to their players --though the main concern raised is the impact on ticket prices, as the revenue sharing, of course, comes from the teams’ total revenue -- meaning the teams will have to make more to be able to pay their players accordingly and still make a profit.
That said, all of this hinges on the House vs. NCAA verdict. The good news is that this verdict will likely heavily influence guardrails for NIL spending, meaning that teams will be less likely to pull a Michigan, per se, and spend over ten million dollars on a single prospect.
How this change will affect the Buffs is mostly unknown at this time, though it’s clear that this is both a detriment and a bargaining chip; they’ll be forced to spend less on their players, but have a powerful incentive:
The more hype a player can bring to the program, the more revenue the Buffs will make. And the more the player will make.