It’s National Early Signing Day. So we’re going to talk about that.
NIL Really Did Change the Game
Name-Image-Likeness came through in probably the best way possible. If you haven’t heard the name Travis Hunter, let’s explain.
Travis Hunter is, by multiple accounts, the best football recruit in the country right now. By other accounts, he’s the second-best. Either way, a very talented young defensive back who, until today, was expected to sign with Florida State.
You might be able to see where this is going.
If you guessed that Travis Hunter, swayed by an NIL deal, turned away from FSU, you’re probably right. We don’t know with certainty, but reports are getting stronger that Hunter’s decommitment from the Seminoles came after Hunter was offered perhaps more than a million dollars, perhaps from Barstool and Penn National Gaming, to play somewhere else. That somewhere else? This is where the story might get good.
Travis Hunter did not sign with Florida. He didn’t sign with Alabama. He didn’t sign with Georgia or LSU or Texas. Travis Hunter signed with Jackson State, an HBCU that just won its first SWAC (FCS level) championship since 2007. Why would Barstool want Hunter to go to Jackson State? One of their employees (or contractors, I don’t know the exact tax agreement) is the Jackson State head football coach. His name? Deion Sanders. Yes. That Deion Sanders.
There are three main camps upset about this. The first is Florida State fans, and they’re right to be upset, and Stu talked about them in his notes. The second are people who don’t like NIL, and we’re a free-market blog, so you can guess how we feel about people not liking NIL. The third is people who don’t like Barstool, and while it’s certainly justified to not like Barstool (we tend to see some things as gray and some things as black-and-white with them), this might be a good thing they’ve done here. At the very least, it isn’t a bad thing.
Jackson State is an HBCU, an Historically Black College/University, founded twelve years after the Civil War ended in order to educate Black Americans, as other colleges at the time would not. We’ve written about HBCU’s on this site before. We aren’t experts, but our impression is that they’re still an important force in Black education in the United States, and they’re certainly a major part of Civil Rights history. Successful HBCU’s, it stands to reason, can help close the racial education gap. So, with college football often a moneymaker for universities, getting the best high school football player in the country to attend an HBCU could, indirectly, help close the racial education gap.
The next question is: Would Barstool donating the NIL money to Jackson State have been a more efficient way of helping close that gap? This is where I’m not sure. It depends what happens with Hunter. Barstool’s motivation, I would imagine, is not to help HBCU’s (though I’d imagine they aren’t opposed), but to make money off their Deion Sanders-centered content. It’s an investment for them. This doesn’t mean it isn’t an investment in Jackson State, though, indirect though it may be. Will Hunter be worth more than a million dollars (or however much the NIL deal is worth) to the university? I really don’t know. Further complicating it is the fact that a lot of football-based revenue goes right back into football. Some of it, though, does not, and sometimes football-based donations don’t show up with football in the name. Stuart tells a story about how Notre Dame tried to raise money for a new psychology building for thirty years, failed, then finally succeeded in just a few hours when they made it part of the most recent football stadium addition. If Jackson State can field a successful-enough program that between revenue and donations that wouldn’t have happened without as successful a program, they get more than the NIL deal’s worth, it will have been more efficient than a simple donation. Regardless, I don’t think you can find any reason to fault Barstool for it. They and their corporate partners are evidently giving upwards of a million dollars to an enormously talented man in exchange for his help with their business. That’s business. That’s economics. And it’s not a dark side of either.
Other Signing Day Notes
Oklahoma’s a top-ten class again on 247, or was when I last checked, implying that the Brent Venables hire stopped any Lincoln Riley-affiliated bleeding. Meanwhile, I didn’t realize that USC’s recruiting was as bad as it is right now. They’re ranked 99th nationally by 247 and last in the Pac-12. They have only five commits. The upside of this is that there are players unsigned, and there is more recruiting to be done this offseason, but Riley has a steep hill to climb to salvage this class, and USC might be needing a lot of transfers the next few years to compete.
Speaking of transfers, Dabo Swinney complained about them a lot and accused people of tampering with transferring players. I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, but he made it out to be bad for the players. Again, though…it’s the free market. Is there manipulation going on? I’m sure there is. But that’s nothing new in college athletics. Manipulation’s always been a dark side of college football and basketball. I don’t see how opening up transfer options for players amplifies that.
On a related note, Clemson’s pulling in its worst recruiting class in a while, and though it’s still a good enough class to be competitive in the ACC and they’ve got a lot of good recruiting classes already on the roster, which probably delays the effects of this one, it’s a bad sign for the program, which didn’t bring in anyone external to fill in for either of its departing coordinators. Clemson’s still the top dog in the ACC, but UNC has a top ten class, Miami just made what seems to be a good hire, and being the top dog in the ACC isn’t the same as being a top dog nationally. They might be fine. They might be great. They might also be beginning a descent from which they will not soon reascend. We’ll see.
Texas A&M’s up there with Georgia for the best class in the country, and while they’ve struggled to do the thing on the field under Jimbo Fisher, they clearly have the pieces, and Fisher’s gotten guys to do it on the field before. Is A&M one of the three programs in the best shape in the country? No. But it may be among the top ten.
The same can be said for Notre Dame, who’s slipped a bit in recent days but is still comfortably in the top ten, reflecting few ill effects in the immediate sense from Brian Kelly leaving and a step forward overall in the recruiting game. A top ten class in a transition year, as is the case for Oklahoma as well, is impressive.
Penn State’s also in the top ten, and while they’ve got a ways to go in the rebuilding world and are dealing with Ohio State and Michigan within their own division, it’s worth keeping an eye on them. They’ve had a few great teams in the playoff era.
Memphis Got Their Win
Pivoting to basketball, Memphis did what it needed to do last night, pounding visiting Alabama. Emoni Bates played his fewest minutes of the year, and I’m not sure that was a coincidence. Bates was a great recruit, but he flashed some worrying combine numbers and hasn’t been an effective player so far this year. We wish all college kids the best, but this is probably a good call by Penny Hardaway, and probably overdue.
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Nothing too big tonight in the sporting world. I’ll be monitoring college basketball, but there aren’t any games of too much obvious significance. Could end up big, but would require significant upsets.
