Quote Originally Posted by Professor Chaos View Post
How NDSU's collective works, as far as I understand it, is when players "sign" with the collective they have to fulfill obligations such as making appearances for fans, helping non-profits, or other charitable work. I wouldn't doubt if that is how it works in theory but not in practice but NDSU's collective is also (supposed to be) just a retention tool not a recruiting tool - at least not as in a coach or collective agent isn't able to say "you'll get $XXX from the collective to come here" but I'm sure the coaches make it known that there is a collective so there's chances to dip into that if a player sticks around and is a solid contributor to the team.

In general it seems collectives are very intentionally vague in terms of how money and how much money goes to individual players because that information will be used to recruit against them (same reason why employers don't broadcast employee salaries). Such as "I see you're getting $XXX from their collective... we'll give you $YYY to come here" type thing - I wouldn't doubt if it's also so other players in the collective don't get pissy when they see what everyone else is getting.

Having a big collective isn't the end-all-be-all though. Texas A&M is hemorrhaging players, and significant contributors, to the portal and you may recall as recently as a year ago Nick Saban accusing A&M and then coach Jimbo Fisher of buying their recruiting class so they had/have a monster collective. If you recruit a player with NIL money it seems those players are more likely to see "greener" grass elsewhere down the road than players who didn't come to your school primarily for the $$$.
NDSU is doing it the simple way. There is no negotiation. Its all based on performance. You will not get a check for coming. You play x-amount of snaps you get y. You play more snaps you get -z. If a players determination on coming to NDSU is $ then he isnt what we are looking for.