Since the day he set foot on campus at Ohio State, Jeremiah Smith has been one of college football’s best players. He’s also believed to be one of the game’s highest-paid athletes.
So much so that Smith recently told On3 that potential suitors — including Miami — were expected to be offering “over $10 million, easy,” to leave Ohio State this winter. Is that truly possible for a wide receiver, even one as accomplished as Smith?
There’s no telling what Smith, who has never entered the transfer portal, would command in an open market. The No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2024 has had back-to-back seasons with more than 1,200 receiving yards for the Buckeyes, and some are projecting the Miami native to be the No. 1 pick in the 2027 NFL Draft.
But we live in an era when the College Sports Commission — created by the Power 4 conferences to help enforce last summer’s House v. NCAA settlement — exists to police athletes’ outside name, image and likeliness deals, and it may be hard to imagine an athletic department devoting that much in financial resources to a single player.
Schools are allowed to spend up to $20.5 million to pay athletes via revenue sharing, and the CSC’s task is evaluating third-party NIL deals struck with athletes that do not count against the $20.5 million revenue sharing cap.
High-profile transfers like Miami quarterback Darian Mensah and LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt are believed to have agreed to deals closing in on $6 million or more. Notably, Smith has deals outside of his Ohio State contract with Red Bull, Adidas and KeyBank. So how much does he make in revenue sharing and NIL deals combined?
Nobody close to Smith is spilling any secrets, but it’s safe to say Smith is among the most well-compensated players in college football even without testing the portal waters.
“JJ is not hurting,” said Brett Goetz, who coached Smith on the South Florida Express 7-on-7 team in high school. “He’s actually turned down deals so he could focus more on football.”
Here’s what we know — and don’t know — about what’s possible.
Schools still don’t have to reveal any contract numbers
As much as we’d like to know what top-tier college athletes are earning, schools are generally keeping quiet, citing student privacy laws and protecting trade secrets when denying public records requests.
Industry sources, however, have told The Athletic national championship contenders are spending north of $35 to 40 million on football rosters for the 2026 season, more than double the total revenue share pool for every sport in the entire athletic department.
How is that possible? If an elite player has a multi-million-dollar deal, there’s a high likelihood a chunk is budgeted outside of revenue sharing in the form of multimedia rights and apparel agreements. The CEO of the CSC told The Athletic in March it’s encountering unexpected challenges due to a surge of school-affiliated deals that may not comply with the rules the schools themselves established.
Yahoo Sports reported 18 Nebraska football players are in the process of challenging the CSC’s rejection of deals totaling more than a million dollars. College athletes are required to submit any NIL deals from third-party entities — those outside of a school’s direct revenue-sharing cap — worth $2,500 or more. All deals must be for a valid business purpose and appropriately valued for the services the athlete is providing.
Miami has plenty of money
Miami, which upset Ohio State on its way to reaching January’s national championship game, is one of the programs outside of the Big Ten and SEC — the two leagues with the highest-paying TV contracts and revenue streams — with an extremely healthy NIL budget.
Miami earned roughly $20 million in College Football Playoff performance bonuses for reaching the title game and signed seven starters off other Power 4 teams in the transfer portal, including Mensah. The signing of Mensah occurred after a legal battle that ended with Duke allowing him to transfer once a settlement was reached.
Miami school president Joe Echevarria told The Athletic after Miami’s loss to Indiana in the national championship game (and shortly before the Hurricanes signed Mensah) the school is “committed to being excellent in everything we do — academics, health system and athletics.”
“I don’t actually think there’s a cap. I think there’s a floor,” Echevarria said when asked specifically about the NCAA’s $20.5 million revenue-sharing deal and its limitations. “I don’t think there should be a cap. The free market system should take place. Like I said, all boats should rise. I just think we need to be better organized as a group of football teams, conferences.”
Since December 2023, Miami has partnered with Legends Global to encompass all facets of revenue generation within its athletics programs. The partnership includes overseeing sponsorships, ticketing, annual fund initiatives and an off-campus team retail store. The school has also partnered with INFLCR and Altius Sports Partners on NIL initiatives for student-athletes. Canes Connection, Miami’s NIL collective since 2022, has also generated millions to help pay athletes.
In addition to Mensah’s healthy NIL deal, the Hurricanes signed quarterback Carson Beck to one of the richest contracts last year (reportedly $4 million).When Smith was coming out of Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna, the Hurricanes were a finalist for him along with the Buckeyes. The race to sign him came down to the very end.
Jeremiah Smith had 157 yards and two touchdowns in Ohio State’s College Football Playoff loss to Miami. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
Ohio State’s in-house NIL group helps players seek outside funds
Last June, Ohio State and Learfield’s Ohio State sports properties created a new entity called Buckeye Sports Group to streamline and maximize NIL opportunities for athletes.
The group, which included founding members of previous Ohio State affiliated NIL collectives acting in advisory roles, was created to connect athletes to companies willing to pay them for third-party NIL deals. While players of the stature of Smith may be able to connect with companies like Red Bull and Adidas through their agents, this is Ohio State’s way of finding NIL opportunities for all of its players.
It’s unknown how much money Ohio State’s Buckeye Sports Group has brought in for its athletes, but they have connected with popular brands like Beats by Dre, Chipotle and others. Smith himself has done appearances at local stores like Dick’s and Designer Shoe Warehouse, to name a few.
“We think we are in a really competitive spot and if you layer in the third-party NIL environment, we are in a competitive spot,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said. “Now we have to orchestrate that, arrange that and make sure it meets fair market value. Ohio State football is a built-to-last championship brand. That’s not going away.”
We don’t know Ohio State’s exact budget
Bjork was new to the Ohio State job when he told Yahoo Sports that the Buckeyes were fielding a $20 million roster in 2024, in the days before revenue sharing began. Ohio State invested heavily in bringing back experienced players and signing a handful of transfer portal additions, and it paid off with a national championship.
Since then, Ohio State’s budget has been more closely guarded. Nobody in Columbus has confirmed anything other than that the program received a large portion of the $18 million the athletic department had available in last year’s revenue sharing. That number is expected to rise this year because it will not have to allocate $2.5 million of its revenue share to extra scholarships, Bjork said.
“That’s off the table,” he said. “So obviously football’s getting an increase, the other sports are getting an increase. So that’s a defined number, but again, how you have to allocate that between retention, between transfer portal, signees, midyear and then every one of our incoming freshmen is here on campus midyear. So balancing all of that versus should the midyear guys count toward next year?”
For decades, the Buckeyes have done everything they can to feed the most consistent winner in college football. Ohio State posted a record $336 million in athletics revenue in the 2025 fiscal year, the same as the national championship season. That speaks to how crucial the football program is to an athletic department that feeds 36 total sports, which means the athletic department has no plans of being stingy with players.
“I’ve said the comment numbers create a narrative, so from our perspective, we’re just not giving out numbers,” Bjork said. “Other folks have kind of outlined their strategy, but our strategy is robust. We have great support.”
Was Smith ever a threat to leave?
One of the top priorities for Ohio State since beginning to recruit Smith has been making sure the Miami native is happy and has everything he needs in Columbus.
“No reason to go back home, not when I’m at the best place in the country,” Smith told On3. “I came to Ohio State for a reason, to win championships, develop as a player and a person and keep building on this legacy.”
Ohio State has leaned into Smith’s national presence. Smith is the most influential athlete in a city that is driven by Ohio State football. He’s such a well-known figure that his autograph session at student appreciation day on April 4 took up nearly all of midfield in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
He has already won one national championship, and in 2026 he returns alongside a Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback in Julian Sayin. Though his receivers coach, Brian Hartline, left to be the head coach at USF, Smith is the primary target on what is expected to be one of the best offenses in college football.
That, along with his Ohio State NIL package, was enough to keep him in Columbus, even after the Cotton Bowl loss to his hometown Hurricanes.
“I knew, especially at the end of that game, that a certain program was going to come at me very hard,” Smith told reporters last month. “Not going to say no names, I think everybody here knows who it was, but I wasn’t going nowhere.”
