I’ll be gentle and allow you to retract your initial statement, i.e. athletes MUST be scholarship to get NIL.
And I understand there is a clearinghouse. But if a non-scholarship player gets paid $100K plus tuition and fees for making quarterly appearances at Eskimo Joe’s (JUST AS AN EXAMPLE!) that’s all good.
I don’t now how this might play into this discussion but under the current rules rosters are capped at 105 players which is also the scholarship limit, again 105. So in theory one can have no walkon’s on the roster.
There are no walk ons anymore, at least in football,they were eliminated this year.
We are definitely in a different era. USC signed 35 players. North Carolina signed 40 and West Virginia signed 46! It reminds me of what led to scholarship limits per class in the late 1970s….in 1972 Pittsburgh signed 60 freshmen including Tony Dorsett. 4 years later they had about 40 seniors as Dorsett won the Heisman and Pitt won the National Championship.