The most interesting NIL comments from SEC Media Days

Name, image, and likeness served as one of the main topics of conversation at SEC Media Days.

Since July 1, athletes have been able to profit from NIL. Nearly every coach in Hoover fielded questions about how they're handling the hottest topic in college sports.

Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from the conference's coaches about NIL.

"First of all, I'm for it. Whatever we can give to our players legally, I think they deserve it. We hired an outside firm to give us some advice on how to handle this stuff. A lot of our guys have taken the business on their own and done a very good job."

Q. With the NIL and the transfer portal, you obviously have to manage your roster a bit with the latter. But with both of those, is there also—do you have to manage team chemistry, like if one guy gets a big NIL deal, others getting jealous of him, things like that? Do you worry about that?

ORGERON: "I think that's one of the biggest things to manage nowadays. Again, I'm going to turn 60 this summer. Football's changed, and I'm going to change with it. I want to coach for a long time, and if that's what I have to do, that's what I have to do. We have to realize the guys getting the NILs, getting an amount of money, and make sure we're managing guys that may not get the job, talk to them, make sure that doesn't bother them.

"That's why we have about 50 people helping us. Not 50 people that can coach on the field, but for player services, for guiding people through academics. That's why we need all this help."

"I don't think personally that it's going to blow up college football or change anything substantially. What we have really been focused on is the education of our student-athletes. You are now putting on 18 to 21, 22-year-olds tremendous time demands. They already have time management [challenges] between being a student, being an athlete, and doing everything we ask them to do, and now they have extra demands placed on them.

"We also have been very educating in the selection process of what they choose to do. I think that's one of the key ingredients. I got a text from Quavo, who's an avid Georgia fan. A lot of people in this room probably don't know who Quavo is. The first text I got was two weeks after NIL started, and he said, Coach, please tell the players to be selective who they put their brand with. Don't just do anything. He used the term 'thirsty.' Don't be thirsty. Be selective in what you do, selective in how you handle your branding."

"I think Grant Frerking, one of our wide receivers who currently runs a business while he's a student-athlete as well, said it best when he said, 'This is an opportunity for our players to grow and have awareness of their brand and who they are and what they're trying to accomplish long term in life.'"

Q: Today Nick Saban has said that his quarterback has earned almost a million dollars so far in NIL deals. How do you see that play out with recruiting and the potential of other schools' brands to earn them some money?

KIFFEN: "That number just blew me away. You didn't prepare me for that. That's amazing. He made a million dollars and hasn't started a game yet? Wow, I don't even know what to respond to that, but great for him."

"The question is because it's not going to be equal, and everything we've done in college athletics in the past has always been equal. Everybody's had equal scholarship, equal opportunity. Now that's probably not going to be the case. Some positions, some players will have more opportunities than others. And how that's going to impact your team, our team, the players on the team, I really can't answer because we don't have any precedent for it."

"Anything that puts a Vanderbilt football player front-facing to our community, I am for. Anything that improves the quality of life of our student-athletes, I am for. The fact that we are in the biggest city in our league's footprint is a huge possibility or potential, so we're very aware of that."

"it's got to be less tempting to hit the transfer portal if things don't go your way. I was talking to a good friend of mine, and we were bouncing this around, and what if—and this is a what if. There may be holes in this idea. But what if, when you sign a guy, on graduation they receive, say, $100,000 or $150,000 on graduation. You only get it if you graduate. You have to graduate. If you graduate, after you graduate from that school, you get $150,000.

"Now, if you transfer, you don't get the $150,000, but if you stay at that school, you graduate from that school, you get $150,000. One, I think—and the amount of money, I don't care what the amount is. The amount could be whatever. I just don't want a bidding war, and I think that, if we end up with bidding wars, that will definitely hurt football. But as far as money, that sort of thing."

"A lot of our guys are getting a lot of attention, they're getting deals done, from what I understand. That's one of the great things about living in the state of Texas. The economy of Texas, being right between Houston and Dallas, two of the five largest cities in the country, the corporate opportunity for those guys to get represented and do the things they need to do is through the roof.

"We have a lot of guys in deals right now that are coming through that are making significant amounts of money, from what I understand, and have opportunities in the forefront. I'm all for them being able to do it."

"You're looking at the state law that we have in Florida, and any time you're adapting to a new law within the state and a new law that directly affected our football program, there's a big learning curve."