Steve Spurrier offers thoughts on NIL, transfer portal

Steve Spurrier isn’t offering some back-in-my-day take when he says that college football recruiting needs more structure in the NIL era.

Former Florida head coach [autotag]Steve Spurrier[/autotag] is not a fan of the modern recruiting structure, but it’s not for the reason you might think.

Spurrier knows that adapting is the only way to survive in the game, so he’s not outright rejecting the name, image and likeness game. Instead, he sees NIL as a new tool that needs to be tweaked. He’s more or less on the same page regarding the changes to the transfer portal over the past decade.

“They’ve (the NCAA) gotta do something about it. I think they’ve got to come up with a budget. The Power Five teams, you’ve got $30 million to spend. If you want to give it all to the quarterback, that’s your business, but put a limit and let them spread it out and go from there. It will help even out things a little bit as far as getting recruiting back into the game,” Spurrier said on 95.3 WDAE (Tampa).

“Right now it’s just about whoever is going to pay the most money. That’s not the way it should be, and actually, those teams that pay the most money don’t win all the time anyway. I think Texas A&M, Miami and Southern Cal have been three of the biggest spenders here in the last couple of years or so but they have not won big.

“You still gotta have good attitude, good teamwork and players playing for each other out there.”

Spurrier also offered a prediction for Florida’s upcoming season.

“Everybody feels like we’ve got a better team this year. We’ve picked up some guys. Of course, we’ve lost some guys. But again, if we get off to a really good start — we open up with Miami, I think at 3:30 on August 31 there. If we get off to a good start, build some confidence, [autotag]Graham Mertz[/autotag] is ready to go and (DJ) Lagway — the backup kid — he’s a talented player.”

“We’re in good shape at quarterback, hopefully, our defense will be much improved. We can get off to a good start, have a winning season and win a bowl game, that’s what I’m predicting. Winning season and win a bowl game and start heading in the right direction.”

Florida faces what might be the toughest schedule in college football next year, so a winning season would be huge for [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] in Year 3, especially after two losing seasons.

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