In the old world of college football recruiting, there were official visits and unofficial visits. One was paid for by the school. The other, at least according to NCAA rules, was not.That line has become increasingly difficult to find.Across the sport, the unofficial visit has become one of the clearest examples of how the NIL era has collided with the old under-the-table recruiting economy. Some schools are using third-party NIL contracts to legally defray the cost of getting prospects to campus. Others are still relying on cash, boosters, coaches, trainers, collectives and creative bookkeeping to do what college football programs have always done: get the right players in the building by whatever means necessary.After conversations with more than two-dozen sources around college athletics — from agents to general managers to former collective staffers — CBS Sports found that schools are using a variety of methods to pay for or cover unofficial visits. Some are legal. Some are not. he methods can be as simple as cash in a birthday card or as elaborate as a post-visit cruise meant to keep a recruit from visiting elsewhere. All of them show how important the campus visit remains in an era when elite recruits can command six- and seven-figure deals before playing a down of college football.
1. The recruit asking, “Can you pay for me to come?”
In the middle of unofficial visit season this spring, a Power Four general manager spoke with CBS Sports and drifted into a bit of a rant. He complained that his school tried to set up unofficial visits with several recruits, and many of them had the same question:
Can you pay for me to come?
“You see all these guys making multi-day unofficial visits that are basically official visits,” the GM mentioned. “These schools are paying for them under the table. Kids are like, ‘Well, are you paying for me to come? … ‘No. It’s an unofficial visit.’
“I just get frustrated. Everybody bitches about, ‘Let there be enforcement, let there be rules.’ Then the first thing we do when rules come out is how can we skirt by them?”
2. The private jet, music festival and changed phone number
Amid a high-profile recruiting battle for a five-star recruit a few years ago, a collective made a drastic move. They sent a private jet for the five-star and his friends, flying them out to a music festival to garner favor.
On top of that trip, they changed the recruit’s phone plan and phone number so the other school they were battling with couldn’t call him for a bit.
“There was some creativity,” a member of the collective recalled.
The former collective staffer called it the pinnacle of the program’s recruiting craziness. But it underscores the lengths teams will go to in order to win a recruiting battle. And a big part of that is unofficial visits.
3. The 7-on-7 bus and hotel-block workaround
A frequent way that collectives get kids on campus is through their 7-on-7 teams during the offseason. The collective would rent a bus and a block of hotel rooms — putting it in the name of a collective staffer or booster — and they’d bring entire 7-on-7 teams in for a visit, almost always so they can get one or two in-demand prospects on campus.
The hotel knew the deal. The 7-on-7 coaches did, too.
In the fall, it was even easier. The collective already had hotel room blocks set aside for player families — travel for player families is often written into contracts — so what’s another five or so rooms for recruits who want to attend a game at the last moment?
“It’s not like we were getting audited,” the staffer mentioned. “We’re not public entities.”
4. The shadow group and “My coach brought me”
There are even more intricate systems built at some schools to skirt the rules. Another former high-ranking SEC staffer described an organization that lived outside the school and the collective specifically designed to aid recruiting.
It was siloed so only a few staffers knew and its express aim was to aid in recruiting. So, if the school wanted to arrange a visit with a certain recruit, it’d have a booster pay for it. The booster would then do one of two things: 1. Pay for the trip, putting the flight and hotel under their name. 2. Send the recruit’s high school coach or trainer money (also prohibited by NCAA rules), and they’d accompany the prospect on the trip and cover the travel.
“So, when the recruiting (staff) or compliance would come through and ask how you got here, they’d say: My coach brought me,” the source mentioned. “That’s all you’ve got to say. “My coach brought me.”
5. The $10,000 NIL contract
A school wanted a high-profile 2026 commit to take an unofficial visit last fall. It was a long flight, so it offered to put a NIL contract together for the player to cover expenses.
The player, per a contract CBS Sports examined, received $10,000 for the trip.
To earn that money, he had to make a tailgate appearance, three Instagram posts — only one of which had to be on his feed — and sign 10 memorabilia items. It was perhaps an hour or two of work.
“They flew him out for a game, he did an appearance and got paid,” the player’s agent mentioned.
In this era of college sports, that’s a completely legal way — albeit the question of fair market value likely looms over contracts like these — of getting players to visit your campus unofficially.
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