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Carolina football looks to do it with different numbers.
As Mack Brown caps his 2023 recruiting class, 29 newcomers will be on the roster joined by 8 transfers. The Tar Heels lost 15 players to the transfer portal, which means youth will again be a big talking point for Brown.
UNC is down around No. 30 in the transfer portal ratings, led of course by Colorado and Deion Sanders, who signed up 91 and ran off almost as many from the Buffaloes program he inherited.
In Brown’s new freshman class, some of whom have already enrolled for spring practice and the rest coming this summer, there are 8 four-star signees and 21 three-stars. And with a big jump on the 2024 recruiting class, the Heels are already good enough to be picked by Athlon to finish third in the ACC behind Florida State and Clemson.
Remember, there are no longer Atlantic and Coastal Divisions to win and qualify for the ACC title game. And Carolina is set up perfectly to beat Clemson in Death Valley on November 18, snag one of the two top spots and return to Charlotte where the Tigers ran away to a second-half win last year.
From most reports, UNC remains behind the curve in the transfer portal and NIL payments, largely because the university approached both changes to the college landscape carefully, if not reluctantly.
The transfer portal proved a two-way nightmare for many schools. Brown was blindsided two years ago when recruiting several transfers who asked him right off the bat how much NIL money they will make. Of course, that is not the way Carolina does it because the portal is supposedly not pay for play.
NIL is in the same boat. UNC’s collective is called Heels4Life, and it seems to be doing it the right way – engaging athletes as they enroll and promising no one anything but a chance to play football and explore NIL opportunities.
Many, if not most, other schools are way across the line the NCAA should have drawn before washing its hands of the Name-Image-Likeness tsunami that first struck after California passed legislation legalizing NIL payment for athletes.
Schools are doing NIL all kinds of ways, and why not because who has stepped up to say their programs are illegal, if not in the spirit of what NIL was intended to be. The unintended consequences have all but turned college athletics on its head. Some toothpaste may get back in the tube by new NCAA president Charlie Baker, the former Massachusetts governor.
At the very least, there should be a “valuation” of all NIL deals with athletes, some of whom are earning 6- and 7 figures. No athlete could possibly do enough social media posts and personal appearances to earn a million bucks.
Meanwhile, UNC is sticking with putting more numbers on the field than into bank accounts.
Featured image via Inside Carolina
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We’ll do it the right way, but many schools, maybe most will not. College sport is dying, being replaced by a semi pro league.