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Sunday Edition

January 18, 2026

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The University of Miami, which competes on Monday for its first CFP national championship since 2001, is known for being one of earliest pioneers in the NIL space. As it assembled its juggernaut, it had one man to thank: controversial businessman John Ruiz.

Elsewhere, our Annie Costabile [[link removed]] broke the news that the WNBA is exploring [[link removed]] buying back the 16% stake it sold in 2022 for $75 million when it needed capital—badly.

— Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]

The Man Who Made Miami an NIL Juggernaut Is Back [[link removed]]

Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

MIAMI — John Ruiz is throwing a party. The wealthy Miami donor previously known as the Miami NIL king is hosting what he believes to be the largest pregame day bash at his house on Sunday, he told Front Office Sports in a phone interview on Thursday.

He expects about 1,000 attendees, including former Miami players of both the “old guard and new guard.” Among the invitees: former NFL and Miami football player Jeremy Shockey and Titans quarterback Cam Ward. And there will be several DJs.

For Miami fans, there’s a big reason to party. The No. 10 Hurricanes have landed a spot in their first College Football Playoff national championship game. They’ll take on No. 1 Indiana at home, where they’ll attempt to complete a resurrection of Miami’s glory days in the 1980s and ’90s.

Understanding the reason for Miami’s success—and why Ruiz is hosting lavish parties to celebrate—is impossible without also understanding the school’s success with NIL (name, image, and likeness), and who was behind it.

Ruiz was the face of the school’s early NIL strategy; in some ways, he was a one-man NIL collective before most collectives even existed. Since 2021, Ruiz’s businesses have offered deals to more than 100 Miami athletes. He told FOS that at one point, about half of the current Hurricanes football roster had an NIL deal with one of his companies.

“I never consider myself a booster,” Ruiz said. “The booster really gives money to the school or the players, the institution … because they want to boost the ability of the school to bring in players. I was promoting a business.”

In 2023, however, Ruiz faded into the background as his businesses began to face significant financial challenges. He offered fewer and fewer deals, and said he currently is not directly involved in any. In the new revenue-sharing era, NIL collective Canes Connection is now leading the way.

But Ruiz isn’t planning to continue sitting back in Miami, however. He has one of those expensive tickets [[link removed]] to watch the Hurricanes play in Hard Rock Stadium on Monday night. And once the game is decided, he told FOS that he plans to begin offering NIL deals once again, this time through a different business.

Miami’s NIL King

If NIL had a capital, it would be Florida. The state legislature wasn’t the first to pass a law forcing schools to allow players to earn NIL deals—but it did have the first implementation date of July 1, 2021. That deadline forced the NCAA to open up the NIL industry that year. In 2021, before the advent of NIL collectives and well before the revenue-sharing era—the rules were very clear: No pay for play. Athletes needed their NIL deals tied to specific businesses.

Ruiz happened to have a couple. He began offering marketing deals with a company he founded in 2014 called MSP Recovery (at the time called LifeWallet), which worked on behalf of government-backed and private insurers to recover payments. The company went public through a SPAC in 2022, and had a combined valuation of $32 billion. He also offered deals through another venture: a boat company called Cigarette Racing, which he acquired in May 2021 alongside investment firm Lionheart Capital.

At the height of his offerings—when Ruiz himself had a net worth of at least $1 billion, per Forbes—Ruiz estimates he had about 150 athletes on payroll for a total of about $20 million.

Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

“John did a great job back then,” Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich told FOS at CFP national championship media day on Saturday. Though he cited at least one other prominent donor, he said that Ruiz was “really one of the first to say, ‘Okay, student-athletes can be the spokespeople that I want.’ And he was able to put together some really good things for some student-athletes.”

Ruiz wasn’t shy, either. The Miami NIL King was known for frequent posts on X/Twitter to showcase deals and offer his thoughts on the rapidly evolving college sports landscape. He said one of his favorite moments was his tweet about men’s basketball player Nijel Pack in 2023. On the same day Pack announced his commitment to Miami, Ruiz announced [[link removed]]that Pack had inked a two-year NIL deal to advertise for LifeWallet worth $800,000—plus a car.

“I thought it was very good marketing at the time,” Ruiz said of the post, citing NIL’s early novelty as part of the reason it was so good for the visibility of his business.

Ruiz offered plenty of other deals across sports, though some came with controversy. His dealings with Miami women’s basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder were the subject of an NCAA investigation and the first NCAA “NIL infraction” [[link removed]]—the NCAA found that women’s basketball coach Katie Meier facilitated a deal meeting between the Cavinder twins and Ruiz before their commitment. Beyond a short suspension for the women’s basketball coach, Ruiz, the twins, and the school all emerged from the brief scandal unscathed.

Ruiz was reported to be involved with other high-profile NIL deals, including offering one as part of a $9.5 million offer for quarterback Jaden Rashada. Rashada never came to Miami, however; he ended up flipping to Florida and reportedly [[link removed]] had Florida boosters pay Ruiz back. (Rashada later sued Florida over his NIL deal there).

Ruiz insists all his deals were by the book, and none were pay-for-play. “The majority of the players that I signed up were already at the University of Miami,” he said. But he added that he was aware of the recruiting benefit: “It was known throughout the country that, if you came to Miami, and you played at Miami, you had a chance at getting a good NIL deal.”

A Collective Transition

Ruiz’s golden NIL age didn’t last forever.

Lifewallet began to struggle [[link removed]] to meet expectations. In 2024, Ruiz dropped off the Forbes list of billionaires. In December 2025, MSP Recovery was delisted from the Nasdaq for failing to meet the minimum requirements for stock price and company value. It’s currently being traded on the OTCQB Venture Market with a market cap of less than $1 million.

LifeWallet also faced an investigation [[link removed]] led by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which reportedly stemmed from several concerns, including Lifewallet’s business projections. The SEC has concluded its investigation without issuing penalties. Lifewallet was also subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, reportedly in connection with a grand jury investigation [[link removed]]; that probe appears to be ongoing.

Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images

Around the time LifeWallet began to struggle, Ruiz slowly faded from the bright Miami spotlight, and so did his NIL deals. He said LifeWallet’s business struggles were not directly related to his drop-off in offering deals. “I just think the environment changed,” he said.

In 2022, a Miami NIL collective called Canes Connection launched; it has since taken over as the main source for NIL and kept the money flowing in for Miami athletes.

Currently, Canes Connection provides a combination of donations that the collective uses to pay players for various NIL activities, plus sources brand deals for the players. The collective is a major reason Miami has been so successful, and is even more important in the revenue-sharing era. That’s because schools can offer up to $20.5 million to players across the athletic department; but in order to get an edge, they’ve had to offer other NIL opportunities on top of revenue-sharing to gain a recruiting edge.

Miami’s football personnel, led by head coach Mario Cristobal, will identify what players they might be interested in recruiting, Radakovich said. Then, “our collective, and the people who work there, along with folks in our football office, will work together to come to some meeting of the minds as far as what level of compensation that particular student athlete might be available to, and what opportunities we could give to them.”

Throughout college football, the prevailing belief is Miami’s athletic department has offered tens of millions to its roster—spending in the upper echelon of schools across the country. Notably, the collective secured a deal with transfer quarterback Carson Beck for well over $4 million including incentives. (Canes Connection declined an interview for this story.)

Ruiz, for his part, told FOS he currently is not directly involved in any NIL opportunities for Miami players. But he’s done being idle: He expects to begin offering a slate of NIL deals to athletes imminently through his new company, a marine-technology company called Luminsea. Ruiz didn’t address the scale of his re-involvement. But he made clear he plans to re-enter the fray of supporting Miami athletes—well beyond keeping in touch with players and throwing big parties.

“I think you’ll see that we’re going to start soon,” he said. “Probably with this coming season.”

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Request to attend [[link removed]].

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