Nebraska AD makes shocking claim about Ohio State, Oregon NIL war chests

The wonderful world of NIL may no longer be a thing if new Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen had his way about it. Dannen recently spoke to The 1890 Initiative (Nebraska's NIL collective) about what he believes will happen to college athletics in the next two years. This comes after the House vs. NCAA case settlement. He firmly believes that collectives could be done away with and banned soon.

Dannen comes to Lincoln by way of Seattle, where he served as the Washington Huskies' athletic director for roughly half a calendar year. He previously worked at Tulane and Northern Iowa. By replacing Nebraska legend Trev Alberts in this role, he will be the one who will play a part in the Huskers finally being back on the football field. He believes the changes will actually benefit UNL.

Dannen's comments from April on the matter suggest that collectives will be banned in all of this.

"Let me tell you something about NIL: It is not going to last forever. Here's what I think is going to happen, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. There will be an antitrust settlement this year in the courts. Part of the antitrust settlement, 1890 (Nebraska's collective) is going to get banned. The collectives are going to go away."

He then believes that each athletic department will have a budget to allocate resources accordingly.

"What's going to be replaced is athletic departments, revenue sharing with our athletes. In the budget of our athletic department right now, we have a $20 million placeholder in two years to share money with our athletes. It's in the budget right now. There's three schools in the country, I think, that have that in their budget right now: Georgia, Texas and us."

From there, he champions Nebraska, Georgia and Texas for being ready for whatever comes next. Then, Dannen follows this up by saying Ohio State and Oregon are paying $23 million annually.

"We've got great advantages here. We don't have debt; we have great reserves, we have a fan base, facilities, we have great advantages to addressing what lies ahead. Let's talk about what happens in the next two years. NIL's not coming in-house, it's going to be replaced by something else. At Washington, our football program last year had an NIL budget of about $10 million and went to the national championship game. Oregon's is 23; Ohio State's is 23. Ours here is not even 10."

Washington had roughly $10 million to work with last year. Nebraska is not even close to $10 million.

"We have the facilities, we have the coaches, we have the fans. In the next couple years, we'll be fighting an even fight. Right now we're not fighting an even fight." 

Facilities, coaches and whatnot are great and all, but wasn't NIL supposed to be what saved UNL?

There is so much legalese to unpack here, and I will do my best to make sense out of this nonsense.

Troy Dannen's claims about Ohio State, Oregon's NIL coffers are unreal

Due to the rather unregulated nature, I can understand why Dannen feels so strongly about NIL collectives going away in due time. It would make things easier and much more streamlined if we did not have to use a third party to orchestrate paying players for their names, images and likenesses. In theory, it should be the universities and the governing body NCAA, and that is it, but here we are...

I do think that athletic departments with rich traditions such as Georgia, Nebraska and Texas will essentially have funds sitting in escrow in somewhat of a sports endowment, if you will. They have enough cash stockpiled to sit on for the day Dannen's so-called dream world becomes a reality. Unfortunately, big boosters like Phil Knight and Les Wexner will prop up their alma mater's teams.

To me, I have no problem with programs that really want to win like Ohio State and Oregon spending close to $25 million through their NIL collectives. Everybody has the right to spend whatever they want to make it work for them. Sadly, only so many programs can win championships in a given season. For my money, having a budget or somewhat of a college salary cap may be the way to go.

The biggest shock to me in all this is I thought Nebraska was a frontrunner in the NIL game, y'all.