The coach did not text back.
Instead, he called, laughing as soon as the line connected.
“I just had too much to say,” he said, before even hearing the first question.
Baseball America’s survey was intentionally simple. Three questions, short answers encouraged. The opening prompt was straightforward: What is the largest NIL deal you’ve heard of for a college baseball player?
“Maybe there’s a larger one out there,” the coach said, “but the story I’ve got is too good not to tell.”
On the condition of anonymity, the high-major head coach described receiving a call from an agent who informed him the player in question would be entering the transfer portal. The agent named a price and made clear it was not a starting point. Other schools, he said, had already agreed to it.
“He basically asked me to sweeten the deal,” the coach said, the laughter still there.
The offer on the table was substantial. To close the deal, the coach made another call. Knowing his school’s football program had existing relationships with a local car dealership, he reached out and asked for help.
The player got a truck.
“And just like that, he’s on my team,” the coach said.
It was the most vivid story among the 51 responses to Baseball America’s inquiry into the largest NIL deals Division I head coaches, assistants and recruiting coordinators say they have heard of since name, image and likeness payments began to reshape college athletics. Other coaches also referenced vehicles as sweeteners. Several cited deals that approached seven figures, in some cases surpassing the salaries of assistants on the same staff.
One theme cut across nearly every response: an understanding that the biggest numbers often live somewhere between fact and rumor, inflated by agents and coaches alike.
“There are rumors of up to a million dollars for one player,” one high-major coach said, “but (I have) no idea if it’s true or not.”
While the extremes were rare, responses clustered heavily around a handful of high six-digit figures, with $500,000 and $750,000 emerging as the most commonly cited.
Largest NIL Deal Heard OfResponses$800,0003$750,00011$700,0008$650,0005$600,0007$500,00014$450,0001$250,0001$200,0001
Across the responses, certain positions surfaced again and again as the most expensive entries on the market. Pitchers, shortstops and center fielders were singled out by a clear majority of coaches as commanding the largest deals, with premium arms driving the top end.
By most accounts, SEC-bound pitchers were viewed as the most valuable assets of all.
One mid-major head coach told Baseball America that his ace in 2025 was offered $400,000 to leave following the 2024 season to join a national powerhouse. Instead, the pitcher stayed, accepting roughly a quarter of that figure after having a conversation centered on long-term value rather than immediate cash. The coach laid out a path in which strong performance could recoup the difference in the draft. The pitcher followed it, performed and was rewarded.
Another coach, this one from a low-major program, said he estimated the departures from his roster combined to generate over $1 million. He paused before offering any judgment.
“It’s easy to understand why some guys would leave,” he said, quipping, “I would too if I was making more than my former coach.”
The flaws in the system are difficult to ignore. It’s a sentiment echoed not just by coaches but by the agents operating within it. One agent who has led NIL negotiations for multiple transfer players told Baseball America that he’s intentionally embellished numbers during talks in order to secure better deals for his clients. It’s worked, he said, almost every time.
Why? No school, the agent explained, had a reliable mechanism for verifying competing offers. Even programs that attempted to keep detailed internal records of NIL deals were operating with incomplete information, making them vulnerable to inflation in an open market with no clearinghouse or meaningful guardrails.
“I have had stories of people getting six figures into the $200,000-$300,000 range in the past,” one mid-major coach said. “However, once you dig into it, a lot of it is fallacy and said player or representative trying to play the game of increasing their value. So when those type of numbers are being thrown around, and then said player ends up signing a revenue share/NIL deal for a fraction of that, it makes you wonder what is real and what is trying to play a game.”
Even when coaches doubt the numbers, they’re forced to plan around them.
Inflated figures reset expectations, shape portal decisions and force staffs to negotiate as if they were real, regardless of where a deal ultimately lands. In practice, several coaches said, negotiations are now built around ranges rather than precise totals, with initial asks almost always higher than the final agreement.
“It’s not that you believe all of it,” one high-major assistant coach said. “It’s more that you just can’t ignore it. You’ll lose out on the players you want if you do.”
For most programs, that reality has concentrated spending rather than expanded it. Coaches said a small subset of premium players—frontline pitchers, middle-of-the-field defenders and proven performers—absorbs the bulk of available NIL resources, while the rest of the roster operates outside that market entirely.
“Just speaking for (my roster),” one high-major head coach said, “we have three players I guess you could say fall into the top tier for their position and then we have to get more creative with how we do it.”
That creativity increasingly extends beyond NIL.
In a more lenient era for roster management, programs are now permitted to fund up to 34 full scholarships, which is enough to cover an entire roster. For coaches without access to premium NIL resources, those scholarship slots have become currency.
Rather than competing dollar for dollar, several coaches said they use scholarships to bridge the gap for players they cannot simply pay. Full or near-full rides, once rare in college baseball, are now deployed strategically, particularly for impact transfers and high-leverage roster pieces.
“It’s the only way we can stay in the room,” one coach said. “If we can’t match the number, we try to match the value.”
Taken together, the responses describe an NIL market still settling into place.
Despite the headlines, high six-figure deals remain rare. The numbers that surface most often are lower, negotiated quietly and shaped as much by leverage and timing as by performance.
For coaches, that reality has shifted the job. Recruiting is no longer just about player evaluation and fit, but negotiation and risk management. Every number is provisional. Every conversation is strategic.
As the market continues to move, coaches are forced to adjust with it.
“Excuse my French,” a mid-major coach said, “but it’s a total s— show.”