Shortly after the Supreme Court greenlit unlimited donations to political committees known as super PACs over a decade ago, billionaire tech CEO Larry Ellison began to cut multimillion-dollar checks aimed at influencing politics at the highest levels. 

And now, after a Supreme Court ruling eased restrictions on college athletes profiting from their name, image and likeness (commonly referred to as NIL) in recent years — a ruling that’s opened the floodgates for outside groups to essentially pay players to attend their preferred school — Ellison made another splash, helping to pay for the deal that prompted a top high school quarterback recruit to flip his commitment from Louisiana State University to the University of Michigan.

The decision by Bryce Underwood sent shockwaves through the college football landscape.

But once Ellison’s involvement was revealed, it sent another message, too — just like in politics, megadonors have a new avenue to directly influence another arena, thanks to rules allowing for uncapped donations. 

Tim Lolli, a former Republican congressional and campaign staffer who is now the director of sports strategy and growth at Causeway Solutions, told NBC News that it’s no surprise that the intersection of sports and politics will continue to grow because “the worlds just operate very similarly.”

“They have rabid fan bases, they are very driven financially — especially in the college ranks now, where collectives have expedited what that looks like — and then you have the high-net-worth individuals wanting to play a part in this through their resources,” he said. “They are both driven by results and winning. You have very clear, defined moments when success comes about — when the clock strikes zero, and on Election Day when the polls close.” 

Ellison, the chairman and founder of the tech company Oracle, has an estimated net worth of almost $200 billion, according to Forbes, which pegs him the fourth richest person in the world. Over the last 12 years, he’s given more than $46 million to federal campaigns and outside groups, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

His first multimillion political donation came in 2012, when he sent $1 million to the Restore Our Future super PAC supporting then-GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney (before donating another $2 million weeks later). That presidential campaign was the first after the Supreme Court paved the way for super PACs by allowing unlimited donations to some outside political groups, and Ellison was one of the pro-Romney super PAC’s largest donors. 

In the 2016 presidential race, Ellison donated $5 million to a super PAC backing the GOP presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida. But the vast majority of his political donations have come since then, as he has spent the last few years helping to fill South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s political coffers by donating $35 million to an outside group that supports Scott (money that was integral to the senator’s 2024 Republican presidential bid).  

Supreme Court rulings in the early 2010s reset the entire political landscape and created a brand-new playbook for how to run campaigns. Donations from both individuals and corporations used to be capped, vastly limiting the amount of political spending each election cycle. But over time, candidates and political parties have become dependent on these outside efforts aimed at boosting their campaigns, and spending has ballooned over time. In 2012, outside spending hit more than $500 million. By 2024, that number has doubled. 

College sports appears to be facing a similar moment, after federal court rulings and subsequent NCAA rules paved the way for college athletes to receive compensation from outside groups by selling the rights to their name, image and likeness. It’s fundamentally transformed recruiting, particularly for high revenue-generating sports like football and basketball. Now, NIL collectives affiliated with college programs play a big role in the recruiting landscape, wooing student athletes with contracts that can total in the millions. 

“In July of 2021, the NCAA thought they were doing something great for the first time. But what they didn’t know was there were a bunch of these, call them super PACs, LLCs or 501(c)(3)s, ready to find ways, legitimate ways, to funnel money to athletes,” a top NIL collective official at a Power 4 conference program, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide their candid views about the college football landscape, told NBC News. 

“It’s pro sports. I was on the phone this morning and comparing it with an agent — essentially, it’s unrestricted free agency, every six months, with no rules. It’s just the ability for the deepest pockets to go acquire the top talent every cycle.”  

Lolli, who previously worked for former Ohio Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (a college football standout and former NFL wide receiver who was one of the early advocates on Capitol Hill for NIL reform), said the similarities between politics and college sports make college sports fertile ground for political megadonors to explore. 

“You have Larry Ellison and these high net-worth individuals that were like, ‘Well, I know how this one world works, being politics, so why can I not do the same thing in college now?’ Collectives — I’ve been calling them super PACs for athletic departments from Day One,” Lolli said.

Underwood’s high-profile decision to decommit from LSU and promise to go to Michigan instead made headlines across the sports world. And in the following days, Ellison’s involvement became clear. 

A statement from “Champions Circle,” the NIL collective affiliated with Michigan, pointedly thanked “Larry and his wife Jolin who were instrumental” in securing Underwood’s recruitment “by providing Champions Circle with invaluable guidance and financial resources.” 

And Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder and podcast host, took a victory lap on a podcast, going into detail about how Ellison and his wife, a Michigan graduate, reached out to team up after Portnoy said he was willing to spend millions of his own money to “go get us a quarterback.”

“Jolin, on that first phone call, she’s like, ‘I needed somebody to step up from Michigan and show that they cared as much as I did,’” Portnoy said. 

Portnoy needled his colleagues on the Barstool podcast, arguing that Michigan’s newfound “unlimited” resources will change the landscape of the sport. 

“The second you get anyone worth looking at — yoink, he’s mine,” Portnoy said about how other schools won’t be able to compete with Ellison’s wealth. “When our guy, Larry Ellison, zeroes in on somebody, it’s a done deal.” 

Ellison, through a spokesman at Oracle, declined to comment for this article. And there’s no public indication about whether the investment was a one-time deal or if he will continue to use his largesse to help Michigan’s recruiting. 

While the scope of Ellison’s personal wealth is an unprecedented development in the NIL landscape, it’s the outgrowth of an explosion of NIL money in college sports in the years since the rules changes. Top college players can earn hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars through NIL deals with school collectives and other organizations. While the terms of those deals aren’t usually disclosed, there’s been a steady drip of reporting making the largess clear. 

In 2022, The Athletic reported that a top college football quarterback recruit had signed an $8 million contract (while the identity of that player was not immediately clear, the reporter later said it was Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava). Two years later, a lawsuit filed by former University of Florida quarterback Jaden Rashada centered on his NIL deal and claimed he was offered $9.5 million to attend the University of Miami but chose Florida in part because of its $13.85 million offer. And the athletic director at Ohio State, which is set to face off in the college football championship game on Monday, told media outlets in 2024 that its NIL collective and the broader “ecosystem” gave its football players “around $20 million” in NIL deals in the previous year. 

Another reason why Ellison’s involvement in Michigan’s recruiting sticks out is because the collective and its allies (mainly, Portnoy) went public. Similarly to the world of campaign finance, there are easy ways for donors to avoid public disclosure. Many collectives are nonprofits or structured like other groups that do not have to disclose individual donors, similar to how billions of dollars of political donations flow through nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors compared to groups that do.

One major difference in the political and NIL megadonor landscape is that more regulation is coming in college sports. 

The NCAA has been working through a settlement related to a series of antitrust lawsuits that could allow schools to pay athletes directly, bringing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to athletes in house and creating a new clearinghouse to approve deals. The details are still not finalized — the settlement has received preliminary approval in court ahead of more action in the coming months, and it’s unclear how it would mesh with sometimes contradictory state laws on NIL payments — but it appears that significant change is on the horizon. 

“The current model is not sustainable for 90% plus of these teams. It isn’t doable to lean on your donors — you’ve already asked them to build new stadiums and fund scholarships and now we’re saying, wait a minute, now we have to pay kids and we need to to do that, too,” the Power 4 conference NIL official said, calling the looming settlement “a good shift, but not a perfect shift.” 

“The kids deserve a piece of the pie, I’m glad the NCAA is allowing it to happen. I think the façade of NIL is baloney. Let’s just call it what it is — pay for play — let’s let them collectively bargain, let’s create a cap, let’s pay these football kids and basketball kids and let them earn some dollars because they’re bringing in hundreds of millions, right?”

Members of Congress from both parties have been also batting around potential legislation of their own, even though partisan differences remain. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, called reforming college athletics “a priority” on his podcast in November. 

“Right now, the current world of college sports is the Wild West,” he said. “Name, image and likeness, open transfer portals — it is, I think, endangering the future inviability of college athletics. I think Congress needs to step in and legislate.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who has co-sponsored his own reforms, told NBC News he’s “more deeply concerned about the monetization of college sports and the predominance of funding, whether it’s by donors or alumni, to attract and entice athletes, and in effect, make them pawns of a system.” He added he believes lawmakers are “on the cusp of making some progress toward a bipartisan bill.”

The widespread agreement for more regulation is a far different reality than the campaign finance system. Despite calls from many Democrats and some Republicans to change the way political campaigns and outside groups operate — adding more disclosures or reinstating donation caps — there’s been no fundamental campaign finance reform since those court cases changed the landscape more than a decade ago, as lawmakers and operatives from both parties have benefited politically and financially from the newer landscape. 

James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist and vocal LSU fan, told NBC News that while it’s clear there’s “much more money in sports and politics” than ever before, it’s hardly a new dynamic in either realm. 

“Big money is becoming very dominant, not just in American politics but all of American athletics, too. Look how much Juan Soto is signing for,” Carville said, referring to the All-Star baseball player who signed a $765 million contract with the New York Mets this offseason. “It’s hard to criticize that the only reason you wouldn’t do it yourself is you just don’t have that much money. If he [Ellison] had donated to LSU, he’d be the most popular guy in Baton Rouge.”

Deep pockets remain important for those looking to compete in sports and politics, but most agree it’s not always the end all, be all. 

Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist and former college football player, noted how the vaunted recruiting classes at Texas A&M when Jimbo Fisher was the coach didn’t pan out as expected, arguing that there are certain intangibles in both sports and politics — locker room cohesion and motivation, for example, in sports, and the winning issues in politics — that aren’t necessarily for sale. 

“There are four or five premium positions in football and they cost a lot of money,” Hunt said. “That’s what you have to pay if you want to win national championships. … You don’t have to spend the most money, but you have to spend.”

“Just because your opponent is outspending you by $1 million the final week of the campaign, it doesn’t matter if the other factors are on your side. If your team plays together well, you have better coaching, better play callers, you can pull the upset.”

Democrats significantly outspent President-elect Donald Trump in each of the last three elections, finishing with one win and two losses — proof that, in both sports and politics, while it’s good to be well funded, it’s not the be-all and end-all. 

“Democrats spent over $3 billion,” Carville said, “and, I don’t know, there will be people on earth who try to figure out to what avail.”