There’s virtually no way we have less money this year. Maybe less money relative to some other schools. NCAA revenue sharing comes online next year, and a majority of the $20.5 million allowed will go to football. Probably $15 million. And that can be supplemented with NIL funds from the collectives.
How exactly it will all work isn’t certain and different schools may be handling it differently. There are Title IX concerns and other potential issues like whether there will be a market value restriction on NIL. I heard Cignetti talking about it on signing day and he said IU was offering players “one number” that included revenue share and NIL.
Where it seems this could eventually land, perhaps with an assist from Congress, is that revenue sharing will create a baseline salary cap (and it will increase annually per the settlement), NIL will be on top of that but it will be monitored and tethered to market value, and schools will sign kids to multi-year deals to check the portal madness to a degree. And the SEC will have to find new ways to cheat.