Georgia football coach Kirby Smart said that 95 UGA players are “receiving NIL compensation through the school’s primary collective, Classic City Collective,” according to Chip Towers of the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION. Smart claims that Georgia had the “highest-paid defensive lineman (Jordan Davis)” and has the “highest-paid cornerback (Kelee Ringo) and tight end (Brock Bowers).” Smart: “I would rival anybody in the country with 95 NIL deals coming off a national championship and pretty gaudy number total that we’ve been able to give out. But I don’t think it’s about marketing that and selling that. It’s more about the depth of our deals than the total amount.” Not everybody is “raking in huge amounts of money.” QB Stetson Bennett would "not confirm reports that he has deals totaling three-quarters of a million dollars.” Most player compensation is “only a fraction of that.” OL Sedrick Van Pran-Granger “laughed out loud" when asked if what he is receiving is “life-changing money” and said that his compensation “wouldn’t afford him a new car" (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 7/21). THE ATHLETIC’s Seth Emerson wrote Smart “pointed to a few other cases: safety Dan Jackson, a walk-on who is not on scholarship but using NIL money to pay for school; offensive lineman Micah Morris, who is using NIL money to help pay for his father’s dialysis treatment” (THEATHLETIC.com, 7/20).
