I posted this as a comment on another thread. (Sorry new to the site) but 

I have a question. I know Texas is coming close to scholarship numbers. Is there anything stopping an NIL collective or company from paying for a players school? For example Burt Auburn is not on scholarship…. What is stopping (name the company) from paying Bert the same amount of a semester to make appearances? Do you have to be on scholarship to receive NIL deals?

Can a school save scholarship numbers by having NIL cover their specialist?

9 hours ago, Run_Bevo_Run said:

I posted this as a comment on another thread. (Sorry new to the site) but 

I have a question. I know Texas is coming close to scholarship numbers. Is there anything stopping an NIL collective or company from paying for a players school? For example Burt Auburn is not on scholarship…. What is stopping (name the company) from paying Bert the same amount of a semester to make appearances? Do you have to be on scholarship to receive NIL deals?

There is nothing stopping this approach. As you mentioned, it occurred with Bert last year. However, I'm not sure Texas wants to go in that direction, at least not overwhelmingly. With the scholarship comes a lot of extra time from support staff, additional academic monitoring, access to meal plans, etc.

8 hours ago, Run_Bevo_Run said:

Can a school save scholarship numbers by having NIL cover their specialist?

Yes.