Alabama Freshman Superstar's NIL Valuation Doubles After Huge Performance

The Alabama Crimson Tide have an absolute superstar on their hands.

Gary Cosby Jr.-Imagn Images

When 17-year-old Ryan "Hollywood" Williams reclassified from 2025 to 2024 in order to enroll an entire year early at Alabama, it was apparent that he was going to be a very special football player at some point.

What fans probably did not expect is that just four games into his collegiate career as a player who should technically still be in high school, Williams would already have an argument for the best wide receiver in college football. But that's exactly what has happened, and Williams played his best game yet on the biggest stage of the sport in the Crimson Tide's top-five matchup against Georgia.

Williams was already doing well from a NIL perspective as one of the very few freshmen on On3's NIL 100 list, checking in just outside the top-80 with a valuation of over $700k. But after a performance against Georgia in which he had six catches for 177 yards along with the winning touchdown on what was one of the best plays you'll ever see by a wide receiver on a football field, his valuation has more than doubled since Saturday. He has also gained over 200k followers across his social media channels since the weekend.

Williams now sits at No. 14 on the list with a valuation of $1.5 million, a number that will likely only continue to increase as the star continues to make a name for himself this season. On the year so far, Williams has 16 receptions for 462 yards and five touchdowns, averaging nearly 30 yards per catch. For reference on just how ridiculous the start to his career has been, Williams already has more touchdowns than Julio Jones did as a freshman in 2008 and is on pace to shatter Amari Cooper's 2012 program record of 1,000 yards for a freshman at Alabama.

Had NIL been around when Jones and Cooper made their way through Tuscaloosa, they certainly would have cashed in tremendously, but maybe not to the degree that Ryan Williams is about to get to. Williams is on an absolutely historic pace and is taking the nation by storm as every college football fan finds out about the 17-year-old from Saraland, AL who is making some of the best defensive backs in the country look like children.

Williams' growth both on the field and in the NIL sphere will be fascinating to monitor throughout the season.