Michigan RB Blake Corum talks NIL, positional value in NFL

By Aaron McMann |
When it comes to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), there may not be anyone who has it better on the Michigan football team than Blake Corum.
The Wolverines’ star running back has several business deals lined up, holds regular autograph sessions around town, and stages football camps for kids during the summer.
Corum even got into real estate this summer, flipping his first house with dad.
“We purchased a house back in my hometown (Marshall, Va.) and renovated it a little bit,” Corum, who returns to Michigan for his senior season, revealed last week at Big Ten Media Days. “Now it’s on the market. We had a couple come through the other day. Hopefully it sells fast.”
The hope, Corum says, is to turn this sale into more — multi-family homes are next, followed by apartment complexes, with a stated goal to “see how far I can take it.”
“Setting myself up for the future,” Corum said. “That’s what Michigan is about — setting their college graduates up. That’s not my only investment, but it’s something that I love. I’ve always been interested in real estate.”
Corum’s on-field success at Michigan in recent years has turned him into a busy man in the NIL era, with companies clamoring to do business with the star running back. The result has been a “good amount of cash,” an added benefit in his head-turning decision to bypass the NFL draft last spring and return to school.
Perhaps no one was caught off guard by his decision to return to Michigan than its head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who proclaimed last week that it “made my day, made my week, made my offseason.” The Wolverines bring back two of their top running backs from an offense that helped win a Big Ten title and earn a College Football Playoff berth.
And if you listen to Corum, the goals in 2023 are even greater.
“It’s win-or-bust, and I think the guys know that,” Corum said. “But we don’t have to say anything. We know what it is. Talk is cheap. Right now, we’re just focused on camp on the 2nd and we’re going to go from there.”
All of this comes as talk about positional value in the NFL heats up. Running backs in the league have become disenfranchised in recent months with shrinking contracts and leverage, while positions such as quarterback and defensive end suck up all the attention and huge paydays.
Corum declined to say whether his return to Michigan had anything to do with that, but he called the waning value on NFL running backs “frustrating” to watch.
“I’m not there yet so I can’t speak for the players literally going through it, but I see they’re having their meetings and hopefully things change,” Corum said. “The running-back position has always been — and still is — a valuable position. I think it means a lot to the game. You have greats — Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, and now Derrick Henry — so it’s like, those guys mean a lot to the game. Why not treat ‘em as such?”
Which makes NIL and another year in school such a big deal for a player like Corum, who regularly brings up the bigger picture in interviews. He earned his bachelor’s degree in the spring and has become a regular at alumni networking events in Ann Arbor, just in case his (presumed) NFL career doesn’t last long.
Until then, Corum plans to continue capitalizing on the NIL era and lead Michigan to college football’s mountaintop. And he has a message for high school prospects looking to make their recruitment all about money.
“I tell them, ‘When you come here and you’re successful, you have a good chance of making a good amount of money,’” Corum said. “You have to come here, you have to put in the work, and after you put in the work you reap what you sow.”