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Or some of the lesser programs might see this as a way to field a team with minimal or no NIL $.

If he had decent offers he wouldn't be going to Juco. Much more likely is that your analysis was just wrong.

Strickland was not a highly regarded recruit FYI

There are a couple loopholes. First one being a company in their native country paying them - obviously a bit hard to figure out logistically. The other is through the coach's camps. Those qualify as on campus work and the hour limits of F1 visas aren't there during the summer time.

I doubt NIL is eliminating under-the-table payments completely

I agree with what's in bold. It's way too easy to get tax exempt status. And yes, an NIL collective is less deserving of other organizations of tax exempt status. It's a brand new idea that exists for boosters to funnel money to college athletes. Giving them a charitable arm - which isn't always the case - is a savvy but shady way to make them look more legit. It's like the glut of religious charter "schools" that exist to house a basketball program. We shouldn't be letting this stuff fool us. The people who have the ability to throw big money at athletes to benefit their alma maters are going to be a lot of the same people who know how to get around paying taxes. It's no wonder they've already found a way to combine tax avoidance and aggressive boosterism in the earliest days of NIL's existence.

You don’t have to provide charity services to be a tax exempt organization. Most tax exempt organizations don’t provide any charity services.

There are tons of tax exempt organizations that aren’t charities. Is is a NIL collective any less deserving an organization for tax exempt status than one that throws money at people to influence public policy and legislation? How do you determine that? Those kind of decisions get into risky legal territory. It would be hard to single out the collectives. What we really need to do is change the law and take tax exempt status from a bunch of organizations.