Last December, after a long day of player meetings and bowl preparations, Thomas Hammock came to the conclusion that he had done a terrible job of thinking.
He’s leaving.
He is Antario Brown, the all-conference running back from Northern Illinois who had so many high offers that he spoke to Hammock earlier that day and informed the Huskies’ head coach that he would transfer to one of those big conference contenders.
This is the reality for many Group of Five football coaches today: They recruit an underrated high school player, spend years developing him into a top player, and then watch him leave for a bigger salary.
But this story, unlike many other stories, ends differently.
Within minutes of Hammock returning home that December day, Brown called with a change of heart: “I’m staying,” he told the coach.
Hammock, who is in his sixth year leading the NIU football program, tells the story as a way to provide a glimpse into life in the G5, where keeping your best players is a constant battle against those with deeper pockets. He tells it less than 48 hours after his Huskies stormed into Notre Dame Stadium for a 16-14 victory as four-touchdown underdogs — a game in which Brown accounted for nearly 60 percent of NIU’s offensive yards.
In this transformative era of college sports, the sport is a reminder that the gap in resources and recruitment between the haves and have-nots — perhaps wider than ever and growing — is not always an indicator of on-field results.
The lesson: keep your best players and David may occasionally punch Goliath.
The Reality: It’s getting harder and harder to keep your best players.
While Brown stayed, others left. Hammock lost a starting offensive lineman to Louisville and a starting defensive lineman to Florida in what the coach describes as “third-party situations.”
Such situations — interference by a powerful school or coaching staff — are fairly common in the Mid-American Conference, said Jon Steinbrecher, the league’s longtime commissioner and a senior member of the NCAA’s governing committees.
“In July, we had one of the most remarkable football coaches meetings I’ve ever had,” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview this week. “I heard story after story of manipulation. I heard this story about a school out west. We recruited our kid, had him transfer, and then they offered him an extra bonus if he would transfer his teammate. That’s the crazy thing that happens that’s just plain wrong.”
Steinbrecher declined to name the “school out west.” In this most recent cycle, MAC teams lost 42 players to power conference teams. Nine of the 12 schools lost at least three players to top-tier programs. Steinbrecher has encouraged MAC coaches to gather evidence of tampering so he can pass such evidence on to the NCAA’s enforcement staff.
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Harsh reality for many G5 schools: ‘It’s a hopeless feeling’
In total, over 150 players from Group Five moved to the Power Four, with one year remaining, choosing to play their final season at the highest level.
“Anyone who’s 6-foot-5 is gone, even if it’s to join (power conference) scout teams. If you’re a 6-foot-5 corner, you’re gone. You lose your best players,” former Akron and UL-Monroe coach Terry Bowden told Yahoo Sports this spring.
“It’s a hopeless feeling,” said SMU coach Rhett Lashlee, whose school went from G5 American to P4 ACC this year.
That’s why it’s so surprising that Northern Illinois can retain enough players to beat an opponent like Notre Dame.
“It’s remarkable that they’ve been able to keep their roster,” Steinbrecher said. “The teams that can do that have something special.”
Northern Illinois’ collective — the Boneyard Victor E. — has done a decent job of retention, despite generating only a small fraction of its members in power conferences. Its annual budget is comparable to many G5 collectives, between $500,000 and $1 million, says Jason Belzer, the founder of SANIL (Student Athlete NIL), an organization that operates more than 50 collectives across the country, including the Boneyard.
The Huskies’ NIL football budget, Belzer noted, is likely a smaller amount than what many power conference collectives pay a single player. But in the Group of Five, “it’s all about retention,” he said.
The Huskies return about 15 starters and have 35 seniors. A whopping 21 of those seniors have been on the roster since their freshman year — a number that school officials believe is the third-highest of any program in the country (behind only Stanford and Navy).
In this day and age of increasing player movement, perhaps there should be a new statistic for such a number: the Retainment Number.
“There are still people who believe in loyalty,” Hammock says. “There are still people who will stick with you after you’ve stuck with them.”
And then there are others who pursue a business relationship, some of which do not always end well.
“We’ve had kids in the portal and they’re in other places and they’re kicking themselves,” Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier said. “They hate it. It’s the NFL model.”
Hammock is all about love, he says. And while it sounds cliché, he means it. It’s the first thing he said when Brown walked into his office about a transfer: “I love you,” he told his running back. Hammock is the only coach on the staff who can make a formal offer to a recruit. That usually involves the requirement of multiple in-person meetings with the recruit.
Can Hammock’s approach really work in a college football world that is increasingly turning into a transactional business? Is it a way forward for the Group of Five, a division with little NIL funding?
“If I want it to be transactional, I’ll go back to the NFL,” said Hammock, who played five years with the Baltimore Ravens. “I know what that’s like. I want to make an impact on young people.”
But love can only go so far. Love can’t pay the rent or buy mom a new car.
In the MAC, manipulation is rampant. Every December is a hectic few weeks when the transfer portal opens.
“The amount of sneaking into the DMs…” Frazer said. “But if you’re just going to buy your players and a squad, you’re not going to have that connection that we have here.”
Is it love that keeps players going? It’s definitely not money — not here.
Collectively, it is estimated that Notre Dame’s highest paid player makes about the same amount per month as NIU’s highest paid player makes in a year ($30,000-50,000).
“We — the media and the general public and the professionals — spend a lot of time focusing on what people have and don’t have,” Steinbrecher said. “At the end of the day, you have to play the game. That’s the beauty of it.”
What is the way forward for G5 schools?
How long will it last? she — power conference programs — play these games?
It’s a topic that’s been discussed for a long time: The SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 are arranging their schedules so that they play each other exclusively in more made-for-television games. Now that the industry is poised to start compensating athletes directly, the idea continues to garner more interest, fueled in part by outside entities (think private equity) looking to make more games with the big brands.
For Group of Five programs, competing against power leagues while also providing national exposure generates millions in game fees. With an annual budget of $25 million, Northern Illinois’ fee to Notre Dame for Saturday’s game — $1.4 million — helps cover the costs.
There is fear that one day — perhaps in the not-too-distant future — the Power League teams will adjust their schedules to eliminate many or all of the G5 programs, all compete in a different division and/or hold their own championship.
One of those who has been most vocal about that fear happens to be Frazer, a man who years ago even led an effort to organize a G5 playoff. The idea is now resurfacing, given the financial challenges between the Group of Five and the major conferences.
He is realistic about what happened in South Bend on Saturday.
“It’s a great story if you can capture the essence of the secret sauce,” he said. “But let’s be honest: We’re one of the few unicorns that can do something like that.”
Frazier believes the Group of Five needs to be more proactive in determining its future before it is determined for them by decisions at the power conferences. One of the first steps, G5 leaders say, came in the spring when the power conferences created a new CFP revenue-sharing model that put those in the Group of Five at a financial disadvantage.
But what exactly does proactive mean? In a meeting in Dallas last month, G5 commissioners discussed options including an NIT-style football tournament featuring four or eight teams with G5 teams and bowl games played each December, as well as a more regional schedule around their Olympic sports.
“People don’t want to hear about running our own tournament or our own championship,” Frazier said. “People don’t like the NIT model. They have all these problems. But let’s be proactive. If we’re going to try to hide the cards … let’s be self-aware. We don’t have cards. We’ve got to get past that. We’ve got to do something sooner rather than later. We know a lot of us can’t do the rev share.”
Steinbrecher refuses to discuss the G5’s possibilities and keeps the conversations the commissioners have secret, other than to say they are “exploring” the early season window, such as week zero, and the postseason.
“I don’t know what that looks like,” he said. “This time of year, everybody wants to play bowl games. As we get to the end of the season, there are opt-outs. What else can we do?”
In the meantime, Hammock and his staff will continue to lean on love. They’ll continue to battle power conference programs to keep their best players. And maybe they’ll sign more stunners before this year is over — perhaps in the College Football Playoff.
With the win in South Bend, Northern Illinois picks up what could be the best win of the season by a Group of Five program — a deciding factor in the CFP selection committee’s deliberations in December. The top-seeded G5 champion automatically earns a spot in the expanded field, where they’re all but guaranteed an away game against a power conference opponent.
Does this sound familiar?
