It’s no secret that NIL has changed college football recruiting in a major way in recent years with teams now using loopholes in the rules to recruit players with promises of lucrative payments. Now one head coach wants to take it a step further by paying the players directly.
During an interview this week, Maryland Terrapins head coach Mike Locksley had quite a bold proposal, suggesting that players should get a cut of the revenue the team generates from football and that there should be a recruiting salary cap that each team gets every season.
“We signed a billion-dollar TV deal in the Big Ten,” Locksley told RJ Young of Fox Sports according to On3. “Let’s take $25 million out of that and give it to every school and say, ‘That’s your salary cap. That’s what you recruit with. You manage it how you see fit,’ which is very similar to what the NFL does with their salary cap.”
It’s not clear if Locksley meant that the salary cap should apply to all schools across the country or just to the Big Ten. But either way, it’s quite a bold plan that would certainly change the way college football recruiting currently functions.
