So, from what I’m hearing and have been told the last few days, is that OU and Jerrand Bradley

This is premium content. Please subscribe to view.

But why not charge and work through ticket sales like Tennessee does to fundraise for their NIL.

This is premium content. Please subscribe to view.

Let me start this post saying I'm not a football guru. I'm not an X's and O's guy. I'm not connected in any way to OU or any other school. I don't have friends or talk to people in any athletics department.

What I am is an engineer, and I like numbers. I've worked in industry for 20 years and I've managed large budgets and I've managed teams of people. So it got me thinking, what's an actual dollar amount that players are making and how does it compare to teams with lower NIL budgets? And I'm a lot less interested with the best player and more interested in the 10th or 20th highest paid players on a team. Because those are starters and supposed to be major contributors and there are implications for depth. And given what we might expect for a 10th or 20th highest paid player to make on our roster, should we be surprised that other teams can come in and pay more than OU even if they have a smaller budget?

Something I'd like to start off with, there's a concept out there called a Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule. Formally, it states that 80% of the outcomes are due to 20% of the causes. It is sometimes applied to wealth or income saying that 80% of the income/wealth (the outcome) is due to 20% of the individuals (causes). Meaning the top 20% of people make 80% of the money. Let's just file that away for now, I'll come back to it...

Things I think I know about OU's NIL (there's a lot of hearsay related to NIL and while I'd love hard data, I don't have access to it):

• Every player gets a minimum of $50k every year
• OU's NIL collective is planning to spend in the $17-21M range and it's likely towards the higher end of that range (I think this was from one of the Brandon and Parker podcasts -- exact numbers may not be right)
• OU's NIL collective is signing all players to a single year contracts

My assumptions:

• OU's NIL collective has a $20M budget. I run the same analysis for $10M and $5M budgets, too.
• The distribution of salaries is similar, or will be similar, to an NFL team's. What this means is if I order the players on an NFL team by salary (I am not factoring in the position they play!), I'd expect roughly the same distribution to apply to a college football team.
  • Big difference #1: An NFL roster is 53 people and OU's is 105. However, in my analysis, after the 51st player, OU would be paying them the $50k minimum anyways.
  • Big difference #2: The NFL players have a union and a collective bargaining agreement. This enforces rules such as minimum salaries by experience level. I'm not sure how to model this exactly, so for now I ignore it in the hopes it's not relevant.
  • Big difference #3: NFL teams can structure multiple year deals with players and spread out salary cap between years and back load the salary cap hit. This is also not modeled in any way in the work below. My analysis uses this year's cap hit, no past or future years.
• There is no such thing as the "model NFL team" from a salary perspective. However, I took the Chiefs as the basis for this analysis because 1) they have a championship level roster and 2) they haven't had an expensive player go onto the injured reserve this year (the website where I got the data removes player salaries if they go on IR since the page is about the salary cap -- I wanted a team that I didn't have to do any compensation for injuries).
  • An area of future work might be to analyze all teams and come up with a theoretical "ideal" NFL team salary distributions. 1 team is a small sample size and conclusions below can be invalid because of that.

All that said, I took the Chiefs roster and sorted players high to low and calculated the percent of the cap for that roster spot. I applied the percent to a $20M, $10M, and $5M budget for an NIL collective and created the table below. I also applied the constraint that every player must earn a minimum of $50k for the $20M budget ($25k and $12.5k for $10M and $5M budgets, respectively). This minimum is used starting on player #51.

Oh, an interesting aside.... Remember the Pareto Principle (80-20 rule) from earlier? If we apply the principle to the Chiefs, we would expect to see that 11 of the players (20% of 53) are get 80% of the income. If we sum up how much salary is dedicated to the 11 players, it's 70% (pretty darned close to the 80% rule!). For a college football team, we look at the top 21 players, which comes out to 73% of the salary according to the table below. I suspect the reason it's not closer to 80% is because of league minimums, but I have no evidence to back it up... Anyways, I think that's a pretty interesting result since I didn't enter the analysis trying to match it up to the Pareto Principle...

Some interesting thoughts (assuming all teams spend according to the same percents in the table below):

• A lower budget team will never be able to outspend the higher budget team on top paid player on the roster. I think this is what most of us would expect.
• A $10M budget team will be able to outbid the $20M budget team on their 5th player and below. The $10M team could pay them ~$1.4M and the $20M team would pay ~$1.1M.
  • In fact, the $10M team could outbid the $20M team on each of the players 5-10 and still have it fit within their budget! This assumes the $10M team would need to fill all of their slots 1-6....
• Similarly, the $5M team could outbid the $20M team on their 7th player and below. The $5M team could pay them ~$700k while the $20M team could pay ~$600k.
• A team with a $5M budget, using their roster spots 1-5, could outbid the $20M team for 10 of their 22 starters! That number is shockingly high to me...
• A team with a $10M budget, using their roster spots 1-5, could outbid the $20M team for 18 of their 22 starters!
• For the bottom of the 2-deep, they aren't making significantly more than the team's minimum. Pretty much any team can outbid any other team on their 2nd stringers.

I guess what this table is showing me is that after the first 5-10 players on a roster, the "haves" and "have nots" in college football aren't as far off as I expected. A "poor" team can still come in and compete with a "rich" team on a large number of the roster. It also shows there can be a lot of turnover on the bottom end of the roster because there's a whole lot of "poor" teams out there who are happy to come in and snatch up a "rich" team's depth.

What do you notice? Did you see an error with any of the analysis?

Here's the table:

Jeremiah Love… my goodness. 98-yards to put ND up 7-0.

Btw, how miserable is that weather? Atmosphere seems amazing, though.

Also, Hoosiers gonna be RAIDED after their last game tho season. The five days after are gonna be nerve racking trying to hold onto everyone.

Login to view embedded media
This is premium content. Please subscribe to view.

Login to view embedded media
This closes the book on what I would have sworn was the best WR room in the entire country going into 2024. Real shame we’ll not get to see Nic Anderson, Jayden Gibson, Burks, Farooq, and Andrel all play together. Could have been absolutely sick

Brandon or Parker will OU push here?

Was traveling most of the day and stopped with the family for my kids to see FSU stadium and UF (The Swamp) stadium on way to my son’s FBU Future Selection Showcase he is competing in around Naples (FL) tomorrow. He was garnered that distinction after winning Top Gun in Tulsa.

Anywho, dad brag aside, I was able to get caught up on everything that went down last night(holy crap that was a lot to process) and talk to a few sources this morning about DT Damonic Williams and where things stand, along with some interesting tidbits on OL transfer recruiting that might differ from what was reported by another person.

Here is what I got:



*** Source around Damonic Williams told me that they are just waiting on the contract to be sent over and to sign at this point. Sure, something could twist or turn and go sour, but as of now, there is somewhat of a verbal agreement between the two parties, per a well-connected source.

“No. It’s not true that Dam might transfer. At least not something we have discussed yet. Everything has gone well for him and us in the negotiating,” the source said.

I’m also told by a connected source that Williams’ younger brother, Joshua, who holds an OU offer, and his mom, Cicily, are looking to potentially move into the OKC metro soon if everything does go as planned.

I’ll update you if I hear differently, but that’s what I was told tonight on the Williams’ situation.

*** Also, despite what some have said, OU never thought Ga Tech transfer OL Corey Robinson II was “theirs to lose,” as he was asking 800k+ and they had a lot wrapped up in Simmons, several WRs, top returning players on the roster and Mateer. Not to mention the potential additions of another WR, CB, DT, DE and LB.

Oklahoma wasn’t even sure Robinson’s visit was gonna happen after Derek Simmons called and committed on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously, it didn’t. OU tried to hold off on things until Simmons officially signed, and they even tried to potentially take both if it could’ve worked. Just wasn’t in the cards.

“You pay close to a million there and you’re taking from the funds at a few other spots of need now,” a source told OUInsider. “You can get two damn good OL for a million in this market and when you have around 15 OL potentially returning or on the roster next year, I’m not sure another huge cap hit at that position is smart.”

Some may have issue with that quote, but every school goes through that thinking, and I mean EVERY SCHOOL.

OU is 7th in portal rankings right now and not done, so I’d suggest pausing on being upset with how well things have gone and continue to go this week. OU could have more news in the next 24-72hrs as well, so there is that, too.

More on the quote above with source also saying, “I could see going for an inside guy or center if it’s the right fit and warrants the money, though.”

More on that quote below…

*** BUT, there may now be room for interior guy or center to be taken in portal if it’s the right guy, as noted in quote above. OU has plans and is making contact with certain guys. I will update when I get okay’d to do so.

I promise I’m not being vague here. Told you all in another thread if I get the go-ahead we will always tell you fully what’s going on to the best of our knowledge. However, this one is a bit sensitive right now.

I will give a hint: Think possibly a transfer committed elsewhere. Best hint I got for you and I won’t confirm or deny who it is for a few days, or at least until I feel it’s a stalemate and no progress in the Sooners’ pursuit is being made.

Login to view embedded media
Not sure if it's going to post right, I have no idea how to actually post videos on here but this is the O'Neil guy after a big play!! I would pay whatever he wants.

When is this guy gonna hang up his jersey?

He’s spending too much time talking to Jim and Jack that he is incapable of writing a fukin sentence

I respect my elders and i do feel for dean

But shit man we got to seriously investigate this mans well being

Login to view embedded media
Hear me out we give him the pan handle and let him put as many solar panels or what ever he wants there. And in return he gives us a billion to burn through every couple years.

Login to view embedded media
@Parker Thune and @Brandon Drumm

Login to view embedded media
You guys ok

Cole Gonzales from Western Carolina (Derek Simmons teammate). Looks like a good depth piece.

Login to view embedded media

The next great RB out of CA, will be a JR next year. Hopefully we don’t drag our feet with him like we did with X.

I asked for questions earlier in the week. But now that OU has Mateer in tow, and they've added a couple other pieces, how are y'all feeling?

If you've got a question or hot take about football or hoops, let me know.

What can you tell us about this guy? Great size but he is transferring from Pitt State so it is hard to say if his game would translate.

Mateer to OU

Login to view embedded media

You gotta be fkn kidding….

Was he not a top 100 recruit?

He seemed decent and just needed developed

Seems like we failed him