A left tackle can make $4M in college football, not the NFL. Is this pay for play?

Left tackle Dan Moore of the Tennessee Titans can list all the sponsorship deals he has done as a pro on one hand: A few meet and greet opportunities when he was with the Steelers, a grill company that gave him some barbecue tools in exchange for his endorsement.

Million-dollar deals? No such thing, especially for someone playing his position. If he were in college — a talented offensive lineman with a chance to make his team a national contender — that might be different.

“It’s only been five years since NIL started,” said Moore, who heads into his sixth year in the NFL this season. “Another five years, and we could see college football becoming semi-pro.”

And that, in short, is the not-so-hidden secret driving a new era in college sports. It is a business rebuilt to allow players to cash in on their name, image and likeness fame, one that pays exorbitant prices to athletes under the guise that the money isn’t a salary, but rather a payment for services the athletes provide through sponsorship deals.

That’s the way many of the headline-grabbing six- and seven-figure payments that go to college players for so-called “third party NIL” can truly comport with the NCAA rulebook. And that rulebook — for all its rapid changes in recent years — refuses to do away with the fading notion that college athletes aren't pros who can be paid merely to show up and play.

Mike McGlinchey, a ninth-year NFL right tackle with the Denver Broncos, has a contract worth $52 million in guaranteed money but he doesn’t have a sponsorship deal. That puts him in the majority of NFL offensive linemen, who either don’t need to work extra for more income or aren’t well-known enough to grab much more than a local deal or two.

Of the 20 biggest NFL endorsement deals listed by Sportico – a list that starts with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce at $32 million – not a single one belongs to a lineman.

But in college, there’s Jordan Seaton, the five-star left tackle who was one of Deion Sanders’ biggest signings at Colorado, then left the Buffs to play at LSU. There, in the heart of SEC country, Seaton reportedly makes $4 million for pitching a national chain pharmacy, a fast-food restaurant, a personal finance firm and others.

It’s a far cry from what McGlinchey envisioned when NIL arrived five years ago; he graduated from Notre Dame long before the era of paying college players began.

“What I thought NIL was supposed to mean was a local Ford dealership in South Bend puts the offensive line on a billboard and gives us a truck to drive around for six months,” he said. “Now, NIL means, ‘We have collectives of money and the one with the biggest checkbook is going to win.' They’ve used name-image-likeness to open the floodgates to say. ‘We’re going to pay the most to get this kid.'"

Among the 20 highest-paid NFL endorsers are quarterbacks Geno Smith ($1.5 million), Sam Darnold ($1 million) and Deshaun Watson ($750,000).

All of those amounts are less than what the top 10 college players make in sponsorships, according to On3, which tracks college NIL deals, none of which are disclosed by schools.