FSU football: Rival Miami starting a NIL Collective, John Ruiz going broke?

FSU football went from not having an established collective a year ago to having one of the top NIL programs nationally.

The rise of The Battle’s End and Rising Spear has made FSU competitive in every sport, especially in football, which helped retain FSU’s top talent while acquiring the best talent from the transfer portal.

Their work (TBE) is one of the main reasons FSU football will enter into the 2023 season as a top 10 team.

Miami mouthpiece John Ruiz spent last year bad-mouthing collective programs and how they were not sustainable while promoting his NIL tendencies all over social media.

Fast forward a year later, and his public company (MSP Recovery LLC) has been trading below one dollar for months, and Miami football has two commitments in its 2024 recruiting class.

Two women basketball players who signed a NIL deal with Ruiz just announced they won’t return to Miami for their final year, and Miami announced they started a NIL Collective program.

Now look at all of the receipts about John Ruiz talking crazy about NIL collectives:

Thoughts

I don’t know, but it sure looks like a lot of red flags to me. Football is king when it comes to revenue, and the money Ruiz threw around to help Mario Cristobal land a top-10 class last recruiting cycle seems non-existent.

How else can you explain Miami only have two commitments in their 2024 class? The crazy part is they only had a kicker committed before a three-star QB(and not the blue-chip QB all Miami fans thought would commit) committed last week.

The best receiver in the nation told Miami fans he wasn’t coming back on campus a few days ago. Now, it’s a long time until the Early Signing Period, but Miami has a ton of ground to make up on the recruiting trails if they want to land another recruiting class to brag about despite not having the on-field results to back it up.

Not to mention there’s a good chance FSU will beat them for the third consecutive season, which will not bode well for Cristobal supporters.

Is Miami starting a NIL Collective a sign the commitment level of John Ruiz isn’t what it was this time last year? Miami’s results on the field were abysmal last season, and they still have major holes at key positions.

The best coaching staff nationally put together by Mario Cristobal, according to Miami fans has already been gutted after one year. It’s not like they got replaced by elite coaches, either.

It seems like an uphill climb on multiple fronts for Miami football, and this new collective plan that Ruiz trashed for the past year is more evidence that’s the case.