It was ugly NIL it was pay for play NIL but it is what it is nowadays, they got money wired to them, bagmen of yore could only transfer a car a mcdonalds bag of cash, this created a limit on the transactions and mid 5 figures were enough to get a player signed, few schools could offer more for that same reason. On June 2021 A&M could come to recruits and tell them we will WIRE you 6-7 figures a YEAR, if you sign with us, all you have to do is sign autographs. This is the only reason for their 2022 class they were early movers. (also I don't want to debate exact numbers gotcha if they are an order of magnitude wrong I don't give a shit)
Was it clean? no, was it pay to play? yes, was it legal? according to state law yes because nobody could prove it was pay to play there was no smoking gun to be found because it was SO EASY to half ass an autograph session, why are people so obsessed about semantics? I have no idea.
UT was months late on its NIL One Texas Fund was November, Pancake factory was December, are people really going to argue that A&M's disorganized booster led NIL was not really NIL? A) This is a waste of time argument B) nobody absolutely nobody not the NCAA not the courts not even Saban said it was illegal.
TL;DR Texas A&M offered pay for play around June 2021, they could get away with it by just asking for signed autographs, this is still NIL, pay to play NIL but still NIL because that is what the Texas lege law lazyly allowed.