Gophers football's current NIL budget is 'way more' than last season

Minnesota's NIL situation continues to improve.

P.J. Fleck / Picture via: GopherSports (YouTube)

The Gophers football team has two more football games remaining on its regular-season schedule, but the transfer portal chaos is right around the corner. With that approaching, head coach P.J. Fleck is "excited" about the program's name, image and likeness (NIL) situation heading into the offseason.

"From this year to last year, it's way more. It's way more," Fleck said. "Now again, 'way more' is a very subjective word of how you want to look at that, but it's way more and as we continue to go forward, we just have to continue to find ways to be able to fill those three buckets. And for me, as we continue to get more, we can do more with more. Simple."

QUOTE: P.J. Fleck's reaction to @DTAthletes raising $1 million through their recent campaign with Nepsis and the #Gophers current NIL situation.

"I can't tell you how excited I am about the outpouring of support we've had through NIL, through Dinkytown Athletes. What they've… pic.twitter.com/FWmqtYeQWy

— Tony Liebert (@TonyLiebert) November 18, 2024

Minnesota's official NIL collective Dinkytown Athletes recently announced that it reached its $1 million goal through its "Million Dollar Match Campaign" with local company Nepsis. It set campaign records for new memberships, upgraded memberships and the number of individual donations, according to a social media post from the collective.

"I can't tell you how excited I am about the outpouring of support we've had through NIL, through Dinkytown Athletes," Fleck said. "What they've done to be able to help our program — our donors, our fans, we've had a bunch of other donors step up and even hopefully continue to do other matches as we continue to go forward because that's critical."

Early National Signing Day for high school football recruits is less than one month away, on Dec. 4, and the transfer portal will open on Dec. 9. Fleck mentioned that Minnesota retaining its current players is just as important — if not more important — than adding from high school or the transfer portal.

The Gophers' 2025 recruiting class currently ranks 46th best in the country, according the 247Sports, and they will be losing a plethora of talented seniors such as quarterback Max Brosmer, wide receiver Daniel Jackson and offensive lineman Quinn Carroll.

Revenue sharing is coming to the college football world next season as schools will be given the option of funding up to 22% of their annual revenue to be set aside annually for athletes for the next 10 years. Fleck mentioned how much this could impact their offseason strategy.

The chaos of decommitting, flipping and transferring is only a few weeks away, but it sounds as if Minnesota has a solid base of funding to lean back on in what could be one of the most chaotic offseasons the sport has seen.