NIL Money Map: Where college football's money goes home

It seems unbelievable now, but for years most people accepted that college athletes didn’t need to be paid. They claimed the athletes received scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and the opportunity to develop athletic skills that would earn them millions. Getting paid didn’t matter since these athletes were already earning benefits that equaled what they deserved.

Back then, some knew this was ridiculous. Today, everybody does. With the opportunity to earn a salary in a free market, star players are earning eight figures over a college career. Even backups might be millionaires by the time they’ve exhausted their five years of eligibility. When you take a step back, the NIL era is one of the most striking transfers of wealth in recent history. More than a billion dollars moving from wealthy car dealership owners (let’s stereotype some NIL funders) to young men who largely come from middle- or low-income families.

Unlike pro athletes, who likely live in the major cities where they play, college athletes are still closely connected to their hometowns. This makes it easy to imagine the flow of NIL money filtering back down to the places the athletes are from. A fun and interesting question then arises: Is NIL money drastically reshaping the income profiles of towns across the country?

The NIL Money Map is an attempt to dive into this question. It aims to quantify how much athletes from each city or town are earning, and then compare that number to the total income of the town. Are there places where NIL money would, if counted in census data, meaningfully alter the median income?

The map above can show results based on total NIL money or NIL money as a percentage of a place’s total household income. You can also see results by town vs. county, and you can filter for different schools or conferences. It turns out — not surprisingly — that the places where NIL money appears most compelling tend to be very small, poor towns with a single highly paid athlete. Tiny Silver Creek, MS (population 175) is the hometown of Malcolm Hartzog Jr., a safety for Arizona who The NIL Standard estimates is earning $333,000 this year. Given the town size and median household income of $36,875, Hartzog Jr.’s NIL earnings would increase the total income of the town’s 57 households by over 10%.

The map can also reveal some fun facts about NIL money in big places. The top 3 cities are not surprising — Atlanta, Houston, and Miami. But #4? Nashville, Tennessee, the unsung college football factory. At #7 is Ft. Lauderdale, which boasts the highest NIL income share of any top-10 city, with players receiving 0.13% of the town’s total income in NIL money. Not to be outdone is Buford, GA. A town of 18,000 people, it has 24 college football players bringing home $6.1m, equal to more than 1% of the town’s total income.

Have fun exploring. As always, shoot me an email if you find any errors.