Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, have donated $5 million to Texas Tech. His departure from Texas Tech might have been delayed if he’d been able to make, say, $5 million in NIL money while in college.
In a recent NFL.com Q&A, Mahomes acknowledged that he might have delayed his arrival to the NFL, if he could have made money to keep playing college football.
“If NIL were around when you were in college, what would your deal have been?” he was asked, via the Kansas City Star.
“It would have been a good amount of money, especially for Lubbock, Texas,” Mahomes said. “If I would have been able to get NIL, I probably would have stayed for my senior year, and who knows what the rest of my NFL history would have been?”
Since he didn’t play in 2017, the Chiefs would have had a low pick, since they made it to the divisional round with Alex Smith at quarterback. And he would have been entering the draft with the likes of Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson — unless any of them would have stayed in college to make some more NIL money, too.
It’s a fun exercise in alternative universes. Would Mahomes have become Mahomes with another team? Probably, for most teams. But there’s still a team or two with a history of ruining quarterbacks that might have done their damnedest to ruin Mahomes.