Show Me the Money! The Immediate Impact of Name, Image, and Likeness on College Football Recruiting

Using recruiting data from 247 Sports that accounts for transfers, the authors examined the impact of name, image, and likeness (NIL) on college football recruiting. Name, image, and likeness earnings potential at each university was measured by the average of the top-ten NIL valuations for a university's football players (NIL Average). After controlling for many factors, including university- and coach-fixed effects, our instrumental variables estimates reveal that NIL Average was correlated with the amount of recruiting points a program received in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 recruiting cycles. Yet, the increase in NIL funding required to significantly alter the talent universities attract is probably cost-inhibitive for most programs. We conclude that while NIL is certainly a new aspect of recruiting to which universities must devote resources, the existence of NIL is unlikely to cause a dramatic shift in the distribution of talent in college football.