On3’s Pete Nakos, in an article discussing remarks made by AJ McCarron yesterday about Bama not having any money, mentioned that OSU has the nation’s highest paid roster north of $35mil. 

Nakos is usually pretty plugged in with the NIL landscape. But I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It just doesn’t make any sense. Last year the numbers that Bjork let out totally made sense. You had a bunch of 3year starting seniors that you were able to convince to come back to school for one more year, rather than go be a 2nd to 5th round draft pick. If they had first round grades they wouldn’t have stayed, like Harrison.

So Nakos is now saying we essentially randomly doubled what everyone on the roster was making, even with hardly taking in any new transfers? Outside of WR, the ‘22-‘24 recruiting classes didn’t have a lot of big out-of-state Top100 guys that would command big $ to not transfer. I have a hard time believing that someone like Caden Curry would be making more than JTT made last year. Nakos already reported that Sayin is making half of what most other big SEC/Big Ten QB’s are making. JJ Smith is the highest paid guy obviously, but him and Downs have a huge amount of legitimate outside endorsement deals that aren’t part of the collective, so not sure if that’s part of it. It’s also widely reported that LSU spent close to $20mil this season, and absolutely loaded up with huge monster additions in the portal. I’m not buying this report.