This Year's Official Offer Season Comes With a Twist
Every year around this time, usually on or around August 1st it would mark the first day that college football coaches could send out their official scholarship offers to high school prospects that they’ve been targeting in the 2026 class.
This process serves as proof of who the coaching staff is pursuing this recruiting cycle, whether that be current verbal commits, recruits who remain uncommitted, or even some schools send out offers to kids committed elsewhere.
However this year it is a bit different, as schools will not only be sending out scholarship offers to prospects, but they will also be sending out contract offers to the recruit as well.
Now there are some stipulations to these, since players can not sign these offer sheets just yet. Each prospect will then have to wait until they officially sign on the dotted line during the early signing period, later this year in December. However these does give these recruits a chance to see what kind of money that they are expected to receive from the university once signed. Also, just like any contract in the sports world, there will likely be many of negotiations from prospects who feel they deserve more.
With the new revenue sharing rules, each college athletic department will have up to $20.5 million to share with student-athletes, but not all of that is going to one single program. Each school has their own way of distributing their funds amongst the top revenue earning programs within their athletic department. Specifically for power football conferences aka the Power-Five, the large majority of that (75-80%) of that share will go to football, with another chunk to men’s basketball (around 15%), and the rest to either women’s basketball, wrestling, etc.
Despite this new money coming into the college sports world, that doesn’t mean NIL is dead. Rather it is still very much alive and well, but as of now all deals must be approved through the College Sports Commission. However those revenue sharing contracts above, are not required to be approved.
With all that being said, don’t be shocked to see some prospects and their agents not being all that happy with the amounts promised to them on paper and it could lead to a while couple of months, as could start negotiating with other schools.
As always, stay tuned for the latest UConn Football recruit scoop right here on The UConn Report!
