South Carolina is on track to ensure that one of the most-prolific freshmen in school history stays in Columbia for the 2025 college football season.

Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Dylan Stewart’s representation is in talks with South Carolina and the school’s NIL collective, The Garnet Trust, about a one-year deal worth upwards of seven figures.

The edge rusher leads all freshmen at the FBS level with 5.5 sacks and was just named one of 14 semifinalists for the Maxwell Football Club’s Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award.

A new NIL agreement has not been signed but is expected to be in place by the end of year, the source told The State. It’s expected to give Stewart — who was making less than a half-million dollars this season — the most lucrative NIL deal of anyone on the 2025 Gamecocks roster.

Name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes has been legal nationally and in the state of South Carolina since 2021. In return, the student-athletes make appearances, sign autographs, post promotional messages on social media and more.

Dylan Stewart’s big season

Stewart arrived at South Carolina this winter with grandiose expectations. The Washington, D.C., native was the sixth-highest-rated signee in program history, a heralded five-star prospect who visited Georgia, Miami and Ohio State before committing to coach Shane Beamer and the Gamecocks in August 2023.

Whatever the wildest hopes for Stewart were in his first collegiate season, he’s probably going to surpass them.

At 19 years old, he is a game-wrecker. He flies off the ball like a missile and has the athleticism and lower-body strength to muscle his way through two, sometimes three, SEC offensive linemen.

By season’s end, there might be a case that Stewart had the best freshman season in Gamecock football history. The 5.5 sacks put him on pace to break Jadeveon Clowney’s South Carolina freshman sack record of eight, which was also the SEC record until 2014.

Stewart is also expected to be the Gamecocks’ first unanimous Freshman All-American since Clowney. But even putting the freshman caveat on what he’s done this season downplays the dominance.

Pro Football Focus grades Stewart as the third-best pass rusher in the country among all defensive linemen/edge rushers. Notably, the three guys above him are not freshmen and do not play in the SEC.

“Some guys are born with certain things,” USC defensive coordinator Clayton White said this week of Stewart. “I think that’s one of the things he was born with, as far as the ability to rush the passer and keep his energy going.”

Retaining a roster

USC’s NIL collective fund-raises, takes donations and goes into every offseason with priorities for how to distribute that money. In 2022, taking precedence was offering quarterback Spencer Rattler a package enticing enough that he would return to school rather than go to the NFL. Last season, a top goal was retaining the Gamecocks’ veteran defensive linemen, namely Alex Huntley, Tonka Hemingway and T.J. Sanders.

This season, it would be hard to imagine there’s an offseason matter more important than keeping Stewart in Columbia.

There is real fear among college coaches that a star player could leave, or that an opposing team could tamper and lure a player into the transfer portal. Even as Beamer celebrated the Gamecocks win over No. 10 Texas A&M on Saturday, he couldn’t help but show gratitude to the guys who stayed put from last year.

“(Safety) Nick Emmanwori probably could have gone anywhere in the country last year as a transfer,” Beamer said. “He certainly had offers — illegally — but he decided to come back.”

NIL, often associated with “pay for play,” is being used more often as “pay for stay.” It’s a tool college teams must use to simply retain their roster. That became more apparent last offseason at USC.

Rather than players announcing they’d be returning for another year with the Gamecocks, a graphic instead was posted to social media saying they had signed with The Garnet Trust. The collective announced NIL deals with dozens of players while never publicizing the dollar values attached.

The most compensated Gamecock athletes in the NIL era have been players like Rattler and WR Nyck Harbor in football, and GG Jackson, Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke in basketball. Beamer once estimated that Dakereon Joyner made “over six figures” from NIL deals just in the few months that followed his MVP performance in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

South Carolina has also lost players because of NIL enticements elsewhere.

Per reports, five-star edge Jordan Burch left South Carolina for Oregon in early 2023 to snag more compensation. Last offseason, Garnet Trust operations director Jeremy Smith told The State that running back Mario Anderson was the only player who left USC because of NIL reasons.

To build up a football program these days, signing a transformational player out of high school is great. Retaining them is arguably more important.