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Carson Beck of the Miami Hurricanes.
Miami Hurricanes quarterback Carson Beck faces what will likely be the most significant challenge of his six-year college football career on New Year’s Eve, when his team faces the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The game is a quarterfinal matchup in the College Football Playoffs, so by getting to this point Miami can say it got its money’s worth when it induced Beck to transfer from Georgia, where he spent the first five years of his college career. But how much money does Beck receive?
What is NIL Money?
Until 2021, college football players, like all undergraduate athletes, were supposed to be amateurs. Taking money in any way related to their status as athletes was strictly forbidden under NCAA rules. But a United States Supreme Court decision that June ruled that those restrictions violated federal antitrust laws — opening the door to college athletes receiving monetary compensation for their efforts on the field.
The resulting system allows athletes to be paid for use of their “Name, Image and Likeness,” or NIL. By supposedly limiting pay to an athlete’s personal business activities, the NCAA allowed itself to pretend that its athletes were still “amateurs.”
And Beck is one of the highest-paid “amateurs” in all of collegiate sports.
Miami QB Estimated as 3rd-Highest Paid
According to Pro Football Network’s college quarterback statistical rankings, Beck ranks an unimpressive 36th in the nation in the impact he has made on his team’s ability to win.
But according to the sports financial site On3, as of December 31 Beck owned the third-highest NIL valuation in college football, with a package estimated at $3.1 million.
At No. 1, according to the site, is Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning, whose NIL deal is estimated at $5.3 million. Behind Manning, in the second slot, is the Buckeyes’ sophomore wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who raked in $4.2 million this season.
In all of college sports, according to the On3 NIL 100 rankings, Beck’s $3.1 million NIL package places him fourth. The 18-year-old Brigham Young University freshman forward AJ Dybantsa, the No. 1 high school basketball recruit in this year’s class, places second, ahead of both Beck and Smith, with an estimated $4.4 million in NIL cash.
Beck Rumored to Receive Much More
Beck’s current $3.1 million estimate, however, is considerably lower than various rumors had him receiving earlier this year, when he transferred from Georgia for his final year of college eligibility. Those initial reports put his NIL compensation in the $4 million range, with some estimates ranging as high as $6 million due to various incentives.
But even back in January those rumors seemed inflated, and reporters Bruce Feldman and Manny Navarro of The Athletic revealed a more realistic figure of “a little over $3 million,” which of course fits with the $3.1 million the 23-year-old is estimated to receive by On3.
According to the Athletic reporting team, however, Beck’s deal was still nearly double the reported $1.6 million received by Beck’s predecessor at Miami, Cam Ward.
Ward became the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick this year. Beck is currently projected by the NFL Mock Draft Database to be selected in the fourth round in 2026.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
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