A post on X from a known parody account @ShaneTuttleNCAA included an image of Nebraska Cornhuskers head coach Matt Rhule with "Breaking News" in the lower third. The message stated, "Matt Rhule has implemented a new policy requiring all Nebraska players to receive identical NIL compensation."
As reported by The Sporting News, former Husker and NFL linebacker Will Compton shared the original Tuttle post, adding an enthusiastic message of his own: "Nobody's bigger than the team. I heard this is exactly what the players wanted. What a day to be a Husker and an American."
Nobody told Compton it was fake.
"Both common sense and basic math should have dispelled this one pretty quickly," wrote Jason Jones for The Sporting News. "According to Front Office Sports, Nebraska's entire football operating budget is $84 million. At the time of that report, Nebraska ranked fourth in overall operational spending.
"While recruiting is a big piece of it, most of that total is not exclusively for signing players. Even if recruiting and NIL consumed 25 percent of that budget, this new fake policy would pay each Husker player an average of a shade under $180K, which is significantly low in the current NIL world.
"Considering every player would all make under $200k, it seems unlikely that this is something the players would have wanted. This raises the question, if Compton is pushing news that is not real, just how connected is he really to the program who did not implement said policy?"
Per Jones, $20.5 million in TV rights revenue is allocated to every athletic department for the paying the players across all programs and above and beyond individual NIL deals.
The Senate Committee on Commerce advanced the Protect College Sports Act out of committee last week by a 19-9 vote. A date for the full vote on the measure has not yet been scheduled.
