I agree with you, but I do understand the point. It loses something when you know how much the guys are getting paid to just go to a given school. There was a bit different to it when it was more amateurish.
I supported NIL and still do to a point but it has run amock.
I'd absolutely agree. Both my kids went to small colleges (Case Western & Elon). I actually loved watching those games against William & Mary or Mount Union or someone similar. The quality of the play wasn't great by any definition but there seemed to be a purity to it that was wonderful. No scholarship money, just guys playing for the love of the sport.
Nothing is too difficult for the person that doesn't have to do it.
CJ Stroud #7 QB RS Sophomore
Major: Communications
Passing: xx of xx xxx yards xx TDs
NIL Deals: averaging 6m/year from alumni
funded collectives and endorsements
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
The peaked when they broke the Teo story and absolutely fell off after that. Julie DiCaro is a big contributor over there and she is brutal. She was a local Chicago personality for a minute but has been laughed out of radio stations and publications alike. If she's still there, they are still trash. And if she isn't they still are.
Not sure a star fell faster in sports media than Deadspin.
Proudly dispensing unbridled arrogance since 1983.
The peaked around the time Gawker released the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Because they were a part of Gawker media, they got passed around hedge fund investor after hedge fund investor in the aftermath.
That said, the Deadspin of today is a husk of what it used to be after the current hedge fund investor fired the editor in chief for ensuring the owners operated under the union agreement (they refused) and the entire staff walked off in protest to form Defector.com. If you want the crew that broke the Teo story - they're at Defector. The crew that broke the story that Jackson Carman is a rapist? Defector.
They lied to him... offered him more money than they had in the hopes they'd find it. Told him AFTER he signed hoping he'd feel it was too late and just stay and take whatever pittance of a consolation prize they offered.
Look, don't offer if you can't deliver. I'd tell any CFB player to run away if lied to about life altering money.
That's not true...he signed the NIL deal on 11/10, was informed on 12/7 that the collective wanted to void the deal, and then proceeded to sign his NLI on 12/21 to UF.
Yeah, the timeline is a bit confusing. I guess I read his signing and sending in his NLI on 12/21 as yet another bad look for UF: they essentially defied him not sign at the same time virtually all the other members of his recruiting class were signing (especially the highest rated recruits), leaving him in a lurch. "We're not going to pay you the money we promised you. What are you going to do now?" Pretty fucking shitty.
Yea...but he could've just waited on signing his NLI...he still signed it knowing it was being pulled. If you went to buy a car/home, and were preapproved for a certain loan/rate a month before settlement, then the bank called 2 weeks from settlement, and said we can't give you that loan anymore and can't tell you what we'll be able to do right now, just trust us...would you still buy the house?
It’s not really apples to apples. If you don’t have funding for the house, you can’t go ahead with the purchase because you won’t have money for the purchase.
They may have said “look we’ll get it straightened out and get you paid, but we can’t help if you don’t sign this NLI.”
I don’t feel bad for the kid or the parents. It’s about time a collective/school/potential student finally got embarrassed so publicly.
There are few issues in our world which beg for more regulation, but this is definitely one.
Exactly. It's manipulative. Yes, they're making money now, so it's fair to characterize this as a "business decision" that should involve more oversight, but you know these coaches are still peddling the "family" and "brotherhood" BS to 18-year olds. Meanwhile, the NIL arm of the school is treating it like a game of Shark Tank.
NIL will be the death of college football if not controlled. Only the richest schools, OSU included, will be in the mix for top talent. I thought the transfer portal, born of now almost non-existent COVID, was bad but money is the cause of all corruption -- college football is ripe for it especially with NIL.
No...I just think it will lead to a separation of the top 30-50 schools to create their own division of football, and allow the rest who can't compete in this new era to play in a lower division. Then there will be a commissioner of sorts to help regulate those top schools.
I mean to be fair, it was already happening behind the scenes. This just puts it out on the forefront, and the haves in college football are likely always going to be the haves and the have nots are always going to be the have nots.
Schools that perform at an elite level AND have the money to deal with and navigate NIL are going to do so and it will be status quo, teams that just have the money to navigate NIL and do so are going to be the flash in the pan style teams, and the teams that never compete and never recruit at an elite level aren't.
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
It may have been happening behind the scenes but not to this scale. Not millions of dollars. Not every kid.
I’ve stated repeatedly that NIL will eventually evolve, or devolve, largely into what the intention was because boosters will get fed up with no ROI, and someone calling them for more money every day. I’m already hearing it first hand with one of OSU and LSU largest boosters.
This kid got bait and switched. He will be fine in the end so don’t cry for him but all signs point to him being a quality kid. Of course this happened in Florida. A place of fast cars, fake glam and real assholes.
As for Raiola, I'd be shocked if he plays a down for the program he initially commits to. He's going to go somewhere and will likely demand early playing time, and a handful of coaches in this country have the ability to tell any recruit to pound sand (Spoiler alert, Day is one of them) because there's five more kids just like you, so if you are being outplayed you are riding the pine. Lesser programs won't have that luxury.
I'd be shocked if he isn't on the JT Daniels path already. His recruitment has given me that vibe.
And this isn't jilted lover syndrome. QB's more than any other spot command so much attention and there is only one of them that can play so they'll commit to a place and a coach can't risk being wrong about QB so if the kid isn't the second coming, he'll get benched and that will kick off the transfer saga.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm betting I'm not.
Proudly dispensing unbridled arrogance since 1983.
Which I think is at least partly fixable. I agree it is different than it was for sure but it may not be bad. Giving players more power to transfer within reason.
I have issues with the money. NFL free agency has alot of rules.
One thing that this highlights once again for me is that I have no idea why elite recruits sign NLIs at all and I'm still shocked how many of them do so during the early period. We are still seeing a lot of coaching turnover, especially with assistants, after the early signing day. If you are a top 100 or even 200 level recruit that could go anywhere, there seems to be little incentive to me to actually sign the NLI early. Why not wait.
Original intent of NIL: To compensate players when universities or those companies associated with the program make money off of a player's name, image or likeness and unfairly the player gets nothing (Good idea)
Actual NIL: Pay for play, come here because we'll promise you more money than another school, no caps, little to no rules, no guidelines, no oversight, big donors ponying up cash for HS kids to play for their team, kids committing until a better deal comes along for another team, etc.... teams bought, not built. (Very bad idea)
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
And I'm no Nostradamus or Carnac the Magnificent ... but it wasn't really hard to predict chaos from the double edged sword of NIL and wide open transfer portals.
The concept is good, but there has to be a better way to execute this.
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." -- Woody Hayes
yep, a few rules could have helped.....like, no NIL money until your 2nd year, if you transfer after getting an NIL deal you have to forfeit that money and sit out a year, a cap on the NIL money and NIL money must come from deals the university is involved in that make money off your name, not companies outside the purview of the universities sponsorship deals. I'm just spitballing but you get the idea, some checks and balances in place would have been so much better than this wild west we have now...it's ruining cfb imo.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
having deals with non-outside companies is what's driving anybody with deep pockets to promise ridiculous NIL deals to athletes. These guidelines are not laws, they are rules that could have been initiated by the NCAA, there are many rules that are instituted by schools that are not laws initiated at any government level.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
And no school or conference is going to institute a rule that puts them at a disadvantage in relation to other schools and conferences that don't have that rule.
The NCAA has nothing to do with NIL and never will unless all parties come to some level of agreement that the courts won't smack down.
That is the issue, the NIL rules should have been universal across the NCAA so that this wild west wouldn't have happened....but the genie is out of the bottle so it's too late now.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
agreed here - no infrastructure to monitor or enforce anything when they rolled it out and it was inevitable pay for play, free agency, tampering, etc would happen
It's a wild story. First of all, the idea that someone would pay $13 million over 4 years to a kid ranked 59th in the 247 composite was always just bizarre. There is no way the market will allow that over time - that's a player that is 50-50 to never start a game for you at QB. But honestly, he had 9mm from Miami supposedly, and their rich donor probably would have paid, but the family got even greedier.
These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
I find it amusing that some seem to think college football players do not have the same right to free movement as anyone else. Stop with the student-athlete BS. They have a skill and a right to market it. The university views sports as a revenue source. Controlling the source of that revenue was settled long ago. This is the last bastion of some weird form of ownership that does not exist in the real world.
The university absolutely goes NOT consider athletics a revenue sport. OSU insists that it pays for itself which it barely does. As a matter of fact they are in the process of paying back an 80 mil loan because of covid. Money collected from athletics goes right back to the student athlete.
I'm with you. I just hate what it is doing to the only sport that I love.
Exactly spot on, it's absolutely destroyed CFB as far as I'm concerned, and that's the one sport I've always loved. Of course many of us saw this coming when they started talking about NIL, it's the death of CFB.
I went from watching top college games to only watching Buckeyes games and not sure how long that will last with all this NIL bullshit
I used to watch as much college football as I could, even teams I didn't really care about. Now I just watch the Buckeyes and pretty much ignore everything else. The way this is trending, I might not watch the Buckeyes that much going forward either.
Same for recruiting, I used to follow it a ton, knowing all the top players, where they are trending and so forth. Now it doesn't really matter that much, it's just a free agent bidding contest.
For the first time since I was a kid in the 80s, I watched more NFL football games this past season than college games...if I'm going to watch players getting paid to play the game, I might as well watch the best of the best do it...where very few games are ever blowouts...and anyone can win at any time.
I don’t read the hurry up anymore or any news about a recruit because of nil. Who cares what some kid from Texas that says he’s interested in OSU and plans to make a visit. So what it means nothing until next early signing day, when another school pulls out the bag of cash at the last hour that we can’t match for some odd reason, and he gone. It just isn’t the same anymore. If Urban was dead he’d be spinning in his grave. No more last minute flips for us unless it’s us losing someone last minute. Oh well
I got off the recruitment threads, where I had been very active for several years. Recruitment prognostication does not work in this era - it's pointless to obsess over whether someone really likes OSU when NIL may wind up factoring in. Watching the DE recruitment last year was the end for me - chasing three DEs, and each of them went elsewhere in large part because of NIL $ - and I don't blame them or their families, but why bother following recruitment if money to the player and their family winds up deciding the deal?
I've been a pretty strong supporter of NIL just based off the fact that I think anyone in the USA has a right to earn a living if they're so capable, no matter the circumstances, but yeah, this thing is so far wild wild west that it's going to be hard to reel it back in.
Now when a kid releases a "top 5 schools" or "top 12 schools" or whatever, it's not "I like these schools because of the program and this and that" it's "I'm going to give these schools a chance to pay top dollar for my services in their program."
Still feels very weird to me.
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
If I had to guess what Rashada does I’ll say he’s PAC12, and it’s Cal If they can get him ANYTHING or Washington, since Penix is there now and Kieholz said they had a better NIL deal than OSU.
Raiola isn’t basing his deal on money although not being paid upfront by OSU is seemingly a part of the issue. I’m still waiting on what bullshit Dom Raiola and Stafford conjured up about Coach Day to justify leaving because that’s their public line.
End of day, Smart, Raiola and Stafford made this happen for Georgia with a cool Mil upfront.
This was always going to happen at some point with no standardized NIL rules but I didn't think it would be this quick. Much like schools pulling scholarship offers or encouraging decommitting this is just the next ugly stage.
College football that many of us grew up watching (for me, since the early 1980’s) is basically unrecognizable nowadays. While I’ll always support the Buckeyes, the emotional investment for me won’t be anywhere near it used to be. Go Bucks
When telling the truth becomes a revolutionary concept, it’s wise to join the revolution
Had a weird realization the other night while watching Buckeye womens hoops: they are children. The girls hoops team has a number of players who look so young, literally like kids. And since women mentally mature faster than men, you start to realize that even the mens football team, regardless of their size and strength, they’re just kids. Now we’ve always known this but when compared to a womens hooper you can really recognize this aspect. It was literally last week when i had to ask myself ‘how much care and pressure should I be assigning toward children?’
And that's why I can't get into college football much anymore...it's one thing to allow these kids to earn a little money to live on...it's another thing for them become richer than I'll ever be playing in a game in college when they are not even that good compared to the Pros who have earned that after years of hard work and proving themselves.
Florida released Rashada from his NLI. My guess is they figured this wasn't worth the trouble if it led to this entire situation being put under a microscope. I don't think Florida would have come out looking too hot and who knows what that could have led to for them.
Show All Comments
All this NIL has turned me off to college football. I didn't watch one bowl outside of the peach.
:)
See you in the fall. We both know we'll all be watching.
I agree with you, but I do understand the point. It loses something when you know how much the guys are getting paid to just go to a given school. There was a bit different to it when it was more amateurish.
I supported NIL and still do to a point but it has run amock.
Total unrestricted free agents with no draft. Just another NFL, kind of like when the AFL started. We have the OSU franchise. What a joke!
Karl sherrick
And even if he’s not, which he will, he would still be on here telling us why he’s not.
Same. Love my Buckeyes but cfb in general is no longer the sport I love. Greed, like so many other things, has ruined it.
I don't always finish my sentences but when I do
I'd absolutely agree. Both my kids went to small colleges (Case Western & Elon). I actually loved watching those games against William & Mary or Mount Union or someone similar. The quality of the play wasn't great by any definition but there seemed to be a purity to it that was wonderful. No scholarship money, just guys playing for the love of the sport.
Nothing is too difficult for the person that doesn't have to do it.
I imagine it soon enough being a graphic on the screen like Andy Katzenmoyer's class schedule was.
Awful for the kids.
I can see the graphics now:
CJ Stroud #7 QB RS Sophomore
Major: Communications
Passing: xx of xx xxx yards xx TDs
NIL Deals: averaging 6m/year from alumni
funded collectives and endorsements
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
Deadspin and good takes are not something I’ve ever read together.
Man….. this football team.-Jeff Okudah
The peaked when they broke the Teo story and absolutely fell off after that. Julie DiCaro is a big contributor over there and she is brutal. She was a local Chicago personality for a minute but has been laughed out of radio stations and publications alike. If she's still there, they are still trash. And if she isn't they still are.
Not sure a star fell faster in sports media than Deadspin.
Proudly dispensing unbridled arrogance since 1983.
The peaked around the time Gawker released the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Because they were a part of Gawker media, they got passed around hedge fund investor after hedge fund investor in the aftermath.
That said, the Deadspin of today is a husk of what it used to be after the current hedge fund investor fired the editor in chief for ensuring the owners operated under the union agreement (they refused) and the entire staff walked off in protest to form Defector.com. If you want the crew that broke the Teo story - they're at Defector. The crew that broke the story that Jackson Carman is a rapist? Defector.
Current Deadspin is a joke skeleton crew.
Makes sense, it was a Gawker Media creation, after all.
They lied to him... offered him more money than they had in the hopes they'd find it. Told him AFTER he signed hoping he'd feel it was too late and just stay and take whatever pittance of a consolation prize they offered.
Look, don't offer if you can't deliver. I'd tell any CFB player to run away if lied to about life altering money.
That's not true...he signed the NIL deal on 11/10, was informed on 12/7 that the collective wanted to void the deal, and then proceeded to sign his NLI on 12/21 to UF.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/controversy-over-florida-qb-recruit-jaden-rashadas-13-million-nil-deal/
You're too stupid to have a good time. -Dalton
Yeah, the timeline is a bit confusing. I guess I read his signing and sending in his NLI on 12/21 as yet another bad look for UF: they essentially defied him not sign at the same time virtually all the other members of his recruiting class were signing (especially the highest rated recruits), leaving him in a lurch. "We're not going to pay you the money we promised you. What are you going to do now?" Pretty fucking shitty.
Yea...but he could've just waited on signing his NLI...he still signed it knowing it was being pulled. If you went to buy a car/home, and were preapproved for a certain loan/rate a month before settlement, then the bank called 2 weeks from settlement, and said we can't give you that loan anymore and can't tell you what we'll be able to do right now, just trust us...would you still buy the house?
You're too stupid to have a good time. -Dalton
It’s not really apples to apples. If you don’t have funding for the house, you can’t go ahead with the purchase because you won’t have money for the purchase.
They may have said “look we’ll get it straightened out and get you paid, but we can’t help if you don’t sign this NLI.”
I don’t feel bad for the kid or the parents. It’s about time a collective/school/potential student finally got embarrassed so publicly.
There are few issues in our world which beg for more regulation, but this is definitely one.
Hmm
Exactly. It's manipulative. Yes, they're making money now, so it's fair to characterize this as a "business decision" that should involve more oversight, but you know these coaches are still peddling the "family" and "brotherhood" BS to 18-year olds. Meanwhile, the NIL arm of the school is treating it like a game of Shark Tank.
NIL will be the death of college football if not controlled. Only the richest schools, OSU included, will be in the mix for top talent. I thought the transfer portal, born of now almost non-existent COVID, was bad but money is the cause of all corruption -- college football is ripe for it especially with NIL.
Kratz
No...I just think it will lead to a separation of the top 30-50 schools to create their own division of football, and allow the rest who can't compete in this new era to play in a lower division. Then there will be a commissioner of sorts to help regulate those top schools.
You're too stupid to have a good time. -Dalton
I mean to be fair, it was already happening behind the scenes. This just puts it out on the forefront, and the haves in college football are likely always going to be the haves and the have nots are always going to be the have nots.
Schools that perform at an elite level AND have the money to deal with and navigate NIL are going to do so and it will be status quo, teams that just have the money to navigate NIL and do so are going to be the flash in the pan style teams, and the teams that never compete and never recruit at an elite level aren't.
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
It may have been happening behind the scenes but not to this scale. Not millions of dollars. Not every kid.
I’ve stated repeatedly that NIL will eventually evolve, or devolve, largely into what the intention was because boosters will get fed up with no ROI, and someone calling them for more money every day. I’m already hearing it first hand with one of OSU and LSU largest boosters.
This kid got bait and switched. He will be fine in the end so don’t cry for him but all signs point to him being a quality kid. Of course this happened in Florida. A place of fast cars, fake glam and real assholes.
This isn't anything new to College Football. It's the game of haves & have nots.
As for Raiola, I'd be shocked if he plays a down for the program he initially commits to. He's going to go somewhere and will likely demand early playing time, and a handful of coaches in this country have the ability to tell any recruit to pound sand (Spoiler alert, Day is one of them) because there's five more kids just like you, so if you are being outplayed you are riding the pine. Lesser programs won't have that luxury.
I'd be shocked if he isn't on the JT Daniels path already. His recruitment has given me that vibe.
And this isn't jilted lover syndrome. QB's more than any other spot command so much attention and there is only one of them that can play so they'll commit to a place and a coach can't risk being wrong about QB so if the kid isn't the second coming, he'll get benched and that will kick off the transfer saga.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm betting I'm not.
Proudly dispensing unbridled arrogance since 1983.
The whole family screams drama. I think we started recruiting Keinholz when the staff realized it
Upon us all, a little rain must fall
So....Ohio State?
It's 2023 and you're still calling him JTT?
MGOBLOG says "Harbaugh meets with 5* '24QB Raiola".
https://twitter.com/EJHollandOn3/status/1615768132920172545
We no longer recruit 5* players we have meetings with free agents.
Ohio State > *ichigan Day > Hairbaugh
Who couldn't see this one coming.
Free agency college football. The only reason he went there was the money. No money, now forget it.
Which I think is at least partly fixable. I agree it is different than it was for sure but it may not be bad. Giving players more power to transfer within reason.
I have issues with the money. NFL free agency has alot of rules.
One thing that this highlights once again for me is that I have no idea why elite recruits sign NLIs at all and I'm still shocked how many of them do so during the early period. We are still seeing a lot of coaching turnover, especially with assistants, after the early signing day. If you are a top 100 or even 200 level recruit that could go anywhere, there seems to be little incentive to me to actually sign the NLI early. Why not wait.
Always interesting how NIL addresses the what, maybe 5% of all student athletes.
Original intent of NIL: To compensate players when universities or those companies associated with the program make money off of a player's name, image or likeness and unfairly the player gets nothing (Good idea)
Actual NIL: Pay for play, come here because we'll promise you more money than another school, no caps, little to no rules, no guidelines, no oversight, big donors ponying up cash for HS kids to play for their team, kids committing until a better deal comes along for another team, etc.... teams bought, not built. (Very bad idea)
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
Reply to TypeOH:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
And I'm no Nostradamus or Carnac the Magnificent ... but it wasn't really hard to predict chaos from the double edged sword of NIL and wide open transfer portals.
The concept is good, but there has to be a better way to execute this.
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." -- Woody Hayes
yep, a few rules could have helped.....like, no NIL money until your 2nd year, if you transfer after getting an NIL deal you have to forfeit that money and sit out a year, a cap on the NIL money and NIL money must come from deals the university is involved in that make money off your name, not companies outside the purview of the universities sponsorship deals. I'm just spitballing but you get the idea, some checks and balances in place would have been so much better than this wild west we have now...it's ruining cfb imo.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
Pretty much all of what you are asking for would be illegal. SCOTUS neutered the NCAA in this situation, they will do nothing.
Do you think schools care if non-athletes have deals with outside companies? Now the athletes have the same rights as any other student.
having deals with non-outside companies is what's driving anybody with deep pockets to promise ridiculous NIL deals to athletes. These guidelines are not laws, they are rules that could have been initiated by the NCAA, there are many rules that are instituted by schools that are not laws initiated at any government level.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
And no school or conference is going to institute a rule that puts them at a disadvantage in relation to other schools and conferences that don't have that rule.
The NCAA has nothing to do with NIL and never will unless all parties come to some level of agreement that the courts won't smack down.
That is the issue, the NIL rules should have been universal across the NCAA so that this wild west wouldn't have happened....but the genie is out of the bottle so it's too late now.
"I don't want to be around average, why be around average!" -UFM
agreed here - no infrastructure to monitor or enforce anything when they rolled it out and it was inevitable pay for play, free agency, tampering, etc would happen
They could have avoided so much of this if they had just given them like a cut of jersey sales or something like ten years ago. Instead…here we are.
It's a wild story. First of all, the idea that someone would pay $13 million over 4 years to a kid ranked 59th in the 247 composite was always just bizarre. There is no way the market will allow that over time - that's a player that is 50-50 to never start a game for you at QB. But honestly, he had 9mm from Miami supposedly, and their rich donor probably would have paid, but the family got even greedier.
- A.E. Housman
Bobbing for french fries.
I find it amusing that some seem to think college football players do not have the same right to free movement as anyone else. Stop with the student-athlete BS. They have a skill and a right to market it. The university views sports as a revenue source. Controlling the source of that revenue was settled long ago. This is the last bastion of some weird form of ownership that does not exist in the real world.
t s blue
The university absolutely goes NOT consider athletics a revenue sport. OSU insists that it pays for itself which it barely does. As a matter of fact they are in the process of paying back an 80 mil loan because of covid. Money collected from athletics goes right back to the student athlete.
I'm with you. I just hate what it is doing to the only sport that I love.
SalemBuckeye
Exactly spot on, it's absolutely destroyed CFB as far as I'm concerned, and that's the one sport I've always loved. Of course many of us saw this coming when they started talking about NIL, it's the death of CFB.
Make no mistake, we're still behind.
I went from watching top college games to only watching Buckeyes games and not sure how long that will last with all this NIL bullshit
I used to watch as much college football as I could, even teams I didn't really care about. Now I just watch the Buckeyes and pretty much ignore everything else. The way this is trending, I might not watch the Buckeyes that much going forward either.
Same for recruiting, I used to follow it a ton, knowing all the top players, where they are trending and so forth. Now it doesn't really matter that much, it's just a free agent bidding contest.
For the first time since I was a kid in the 80s, I watched more NFL football games this past season than college games...if I'm going to watch players getting paid to play the game, I might as well watch the best of the best do it...where very few games are ever blowouts...and anyone can win at any time.
Let's Go Bucks
I don’t read the hurry up anymore or any news about a recruit because of nil. Who cares what some kid from Texas that says he’s interested in OSU and plans to make a visit. So what it means nothing until next early signing day, when another school pulls out the bag of cash at the last hour that we can’t match for some odd reason, and he gone. It just isn’t the same anymore. If Urban was dead he’d be spinning in his grave. No more last minute flips for us unless it’s us losing someone last minute. Oh well
Fire Kevin Warren
I got off the recruitment threads, where I had been very active for several years. Recruitment prognostication does not work in this era - it's pointless to obsess over whether someone really likes OSU when NIL may wind up factoring in. Watching the DE recruitment last year was the end for me - chasing three DEs, and each of them went elsewhere in large part because of NIL $ - and I don't blame them or their families, but why bother following recruitment if money to the player and their family winds up deciding the deal?
I've been a pretty strong supporter of NIL just based off the fact that I think anyone in the USA has a right to earn a living if they're so capable, no matter the circumstances, but yeah, this thing is so far wild wild west that it's going to be hard to reel it back in.
Now when a kid releases a "top 5 schools" or "top 12 schools" or whatever, it's not "I like these schools because of the program and this and that" it's "I'm going to give these schools a chance to pay top dollar for my services in their program."
Still feels very weird to me.
The Excellence of Execution, the Best there is, the Best there was, the Best there ever will be!
If I had to guess what Rashada does I’ll say he’s PAC12, and it’s Cal If they can get him ANYTHING or Washington, since Penix is there now and Kieholz said they had a better NIL deal than OSU.
Alll told you wish the best for these kids.
Raiola isn’t basing his deal on money although not being paid upfront by OSU is seemingly a part of the issue. I’m still waiting on what bullshit Dom Raiola and Stafford conjured up about Coach Day to justify leaving because that’s their public line.
End of day, Smart, Raiola and Stafford made this happen for Georgia with a cool Mil upfront.
This was always going to happen at some point with no standardized NIL rules but I didn't think it would be this quick. Much like schools pulling scholarship offers or encouraging decommitting this is just the next ugly stage.
JWilly3
College football that many of us grew up watching (for me, since the early 1980’s) is basically unrecognizable nowadays. While I’ll always support the Buckeyes, the emotional investment for me won’t be anywhere near it used to be. Go Bucks
When telling the truth becomes a revolutionary concept, it’s wise to join the revolution
Had a weird realization the other night while watching Buckeye womens hoops: they are children. The girls hoops team has a number of players who look so young, literally like kids. And since women mentally mature faster than men, you start to realize that even the mens football team, regardless of their size and strength, they’re just kids. Now we’ve always known this but when compared to a womens hooper you can really recognize this aspect. It was literally last week when i had to ask myself ‘how much care and pressure should I be assigning toward children?’
And that's why I can't get into college football much anymore...it's one thing to allow these kids to earn a little money to live on...it's another thing for them become richer than I'll ever be playing in a game in college when they are not even that good compared to the Pros who have earned that after years of hard work and proving themselves.
Let's Go Bucks
Florida released Rashada from his NLI. My guess is they figured this wasn't worth the trouble if it led to this entire situation being put under a microscope. I don't think Florida would have come out looking too hot and who knows what that could have led to for them.