NIL has completely taken over college football. Many programs and fans across the country think that their team has to spend a lot of money to buy the best players to win a championship, but Georgia is living proof that is not necessary.
Georgia knows that NIL doesn’t buy wins, and Gunner Stockton made that abundantly clear by exposing how inaccurate it is to think teams must spend a lot of money to win championships.
Georgia QB Gunner Stockton, on leaving your ego at the door when it comes to NIL pay.
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace) July 21, 2026
“I think people have lost the fact that you’re playing ball. When you’re on the field, however much or how less you’re getting, that ain’t gonna help you when playing football” pic.twitter.com/TYBUT0jVvR
Gunner Stockton exposed everything that’s wrong with NIL
NIL matters, but it doesn’t determine who wins and loses a game. In order to compete at the highest level teams do need a baseline amount of NIL as a barrier of entry, but once the games begin it no longer matters.
Georgia has enough NIL to compete with anyone in the country. They however do things a bit differently. Instead of buying the next best recruit or transfer any chance they get, they look for players who care more about football than how deep their pockets are. Then when they prove to be great players they are rewarded with more NIL money to convince them to stay at Georgia.
Rival fans make fun of Georgia for this and other coaching staffs use this to negatively recruit against Georgia, but all this does is give UGA a larger advantage. Georgia has won three conference champions and two national titles since NIL became legal, no school in the country can say they’ve done that. So if a player believes what other schools are saying and chooses them so they can make more money then they were never a fit at Georgia in the first place.
Smart knows what he is doing, and Stockton is proof his strategy is working. He could transfer to any school in the country for more money, but he chose to stay loyal to Georgia because he knows they are his best chance to win a championship.
Only time will tell if that happens this season, but history in the NIL era shows that Georgia has as good of a chance as anyone else.
Georgia’s leaders have taken Kirby Smart’s NIL stance to heart
Stockton is Georgia’s biggest leader this season. So too is Raylen Wilson who will be the main leader of the Bulldogs’ defense. Stockton vocalizing his stance on NIL will show the rest his teammates how they should view NIL, and Wilson shared a very similar sentiment at SEC Media Days as well.
If Georgia’s leaders are buying into Smart’s NIL stance then the rest of the program will too. That is extremely important because all of the outside noise says that Georgia is doing things wrong. But the results speak for themselves, and that is what Stockton and Wilson are trying to tell their teammates.
Georgia is a program that is built for success long into the future. A big reason for that is because of how they handle NIL, and as long as other programs think they are doing something wrong then Georgia will most likely continue to win more than them.
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