
Jaden Rashada’s unprecedented recruitment: How a 4-star QB went from $13.85 million to no NIL deal
One recruit's journey to play college football shows how disordered the pursuit of NIL money can be.

Kid couldn't handle the pressure
So coaches shouldn’t get paid either. They should coach for the “ love of they game”![]()
Jaden Rashada’s unprecedented recruitment: How a 4-star QB went from $13.85 million to no NIL deal
One recruit's journey to play college football shows how disordered the pursuit of NIL money can be.theathletic.com
Kid couldn't handle the pressure
The issue with NIL is that nothing is really disclosed and it's quite shady.
They already to thatThe real issue with NIL is that the players aren't getting it from being "(THEIR NAME)'s talent is worth $_______." It's literally a recruiting slush fund, where "(TEAM'S TOP QB RECRUIT) gets $______" and the schools and boosters are trying to fill the slot with the best recruit they can get there.
Which is exactly what I've been saying for decades on this site.
This is going way before nilThe real issue with NIL is that the players aren't getting it from being "(THEIR NAME)'s talent is worth $_______." It's literally a recruiting slush fund, where "(TEAM'S TOP QB RECRUIT) gets $______" and the schools and boosters are trying to fill the slot with the best recruit they can get there.
Which is exactly what I've been saying for decades on this site.
Building pro style facilities and lazy rivers was stool toNIL was supposed to reward the kids who are sophomores to seniors who had played a year at least and their play on the field warranted them getting compensated for their NIL.
Now it’s been used primarily as a HS recruiting tool and transfer portal tool.
Building pro style facilities and lazy rivers was stool to
The problem is college sports are trying to have their cake and eat it too. College football has all the bells and whistles of pro sports but then want to pretend they were somehow just like a beer league. Also the American sport system is absolutely garbage for development and for smaller sportsI’m circling back to a group of Bayern Munich analysts who came to America to try to determine how- and from where- they could better recruit Americans to their youth program. They considered not just the current soccer-playing youth, but what value could be derived from kids playing other sports.
Two of the conclusions:
- There just wasn’t enough value in American football.
- Kids on scholarship are professional athletes.
Every time I have thought, in the last 5 years, that the college athletics industry in the USA could overcome all these pressures launched against it, I find myself overstating their power. Individual schools certainly have power… but not the collective, and the NCAA is left crying in a fetal position in the warmest corner of an abandoned suburban office complex.
The older I get, the more I question why sports are so tied to schools. Messes up so many incentives and benefits.The problem is college sports are trying to have their cake and eat it too. College football has all the bells and whistles of pro sports but then want to pretend they were somehow just like a beer league. Also the American sport system is absolutely garbage for development and for smaller sports
not wrong, though speaking from experience on the soccer front it's a much different environment now than it was 10-15 years ago, which is WILDLY different than it was when I was coming up as a pretty serious prospect 25-30 years ago.I’m circling back to a group of Bayern Munich analysts who came to America to try to determine how- and from where- they could better recruit Americans to their youth program. They considered not just the current soccer-playing youth, but what value could be derived from kids playing other sports.
Two of the conclusions:
- There just wasn’t enough value in American football.
- Kids on scholarship are professional athletes.
Every time I have thought, in the last 5 years, that the college athletics industry in the USA could overcome all these pressures launched against it, I find myself overstating their power. Individual schools certainly have power… but not the collective, and the NCAA is left crying in a fetal position in the warmest corner of an abandoned suburban office complex.
Even before that soccer youth team were mostly ethnic social clubsnot wrong, though speaking from experience on the soccer front it's a much different environment now than it was 10-15 years ago, which is WILDLY different than it was when I was coming up as a pretty serious prospect 25-30 years ago.
25-30 years ago it was largely regional or town based leagues (depending on the size of the area) with the elite players playing in travel teams before being recruited into various top high school feeder programs that would get them on the track to an NCAA scholarship. US prospects going overseas to top development programs to turn pro before they went through the NCAA ranks was virtually unheard of, though a few players were going over to lower tier sides in Europe instead and even I got into a handful of conversations with scouts from clubs in lower tiers in Belgium, Norway, and Denmark about trialing once I was over 16 (for visa reasons) before I blew out my ACL and MCL.
By the time I graduated college it had changed completely and these pay for play academies that had just started getting off the ground were the new feeder programs for the NCAA level. This was prettymuch the dark period for US soccer developmentally. Top young players were now getting legitimate chances in Europe though, especially if they were able to play games with their visa status like Howard and Rossi were able to.
Now you have MLS clubs with their own academies that are producing legitimate prospects and for the most part the pay to play academies are becoming a secondary option, with more prospects than ever going over to play. The inroads that Bayern would have had to try to make would have had to be nearly 2 decades ago now for them to be successful, they're better off letting the MLS clubs develop prospects and letting the top prospects come to them. FWIW I have no idea what the financials are like to be in one of the MLS academy programs though I can't imagine it's as much as the pay to play places like IMG where it cost more per year to attend than bottom tier players are making in MLS.
It kinda reminds me of what happened with American billiards. We used to dominate and you find billiards anywhere . You didn’t need a youth system or a development system because so many people were interested. Then the European federations started building academies and investing into youth and started dominating while the USA rotted on a vine. There’s just this weird thing where sports teams/organizations don’t want to invest into youth. They’ll start women team and leagues and even beach or some other variant but youth teams seem to far unless someone outside the organization does their own thing.not wrong, though speaking from experience on the soccer front it's a much different environment now than it was 10-15 years ago, which is WILDLY different than it was when I was coming up as a pretty serious prospect 25-30 years ago.
25-30 years ago it was largely regional or town based leagues (depending on the size of the area) with the elite players playing in travel teams before being recruited into various top high school feeder programs that would get them on the track to an NCAA scholarship. US prospects going overseas to top development programs to turn pro before they went through the NCAA ranks was virtually unheard of, though a few players were going over to lower tier sides in Europe instead and even I got into a handful of conversations with scouts from clubs in lower tiers in Belgium, Norway, and Denmark about trialing once I was over 16 (for visa reasons) before I blew out my ACL and MCL.
By the time I graduated college it had changed completely and these pay for play academies that had just started getting off the ground were the new feeder programs for the NCAA level. This was prettymuch the dark period for US soccer developmentally. Top young players were now getting legitimate chances in Europe though, especially if they were able to play games with their visa status like Howard and Rossi were able to.
Now you have MLS clubs with their own academies that are producing legitimate prospects and for the most part the pay to play academies are becoming a secondary option, with more prospects than ever going over to play. The inroads that Bayern would have had to try to make would have had to be nearly 2 decades ago now for them to be successful, they're better off letting the MLS clubs develop prospects and letting the top prospects come to them. FWIW I have no idea what the financials are like to be in one of the MLS academy programs though I can't imagine it's as much as the pay to play places like IMG where it cost more per year to attend than bottom tier players are making in MLS.
The problem is college sports are trying to have their cake and eat it too. College football has all the bells and whistles of pro sports but then want to pretend they were somehow just like a beer league. Also the American sport system is absolutely garbage for development and for smaller sports
The older I get, the more I question why sports are so tied to schools. Messes up so many incentives and benefits.
Little league and high school coaches are usually volunteers who do it in their spare time. College coaches are making millions and flying around in private jets. That’s the difference100%. Although, the caveat to college sports is that YES, football and basketball have all the bells and whistles of pro sports... but the NFL and NBA aren't also running 12 other sports that each bring in revenue of like $0 to $5000, like cross country and field hockey.
I mean, us business of sports folks talk about how the WNBA teams can't "stand on their own without the NBA's subsidies" ... but it's mandated than FBS schools subsidize 12 other sports teams, and non-football Division I schools subsidize 13 others.
Most people think that college sports should just become a pro league and would welcome that, and I agree with the principles, but am generally against it because of what "The Split" means. they're not going to do it in a way that makes things better for EVERYONE, but in a way that makes things better for a select few.
What separates college from pros is REVENUE SHARING. The 32 teams in a pro league are EQUALS and share the TV money evenly.
The 32 Division I Conferences DON'T share TV money equally. So "The Great Split" would about those with the money permanently leaving behind everyone else. That's incredibly bad for anyone who's not in the cartel. Which is 290 schools of 363 in Division I.
The NCAA has always been reactive and not pro-active. They make changes based on "how do we deal with what's happening now?" instead of "what can we do to make this the best model possible?"
College sports isn't "tied to schools" because someone had this great idea to create a business of college sports, it evolved very much like the "athletic club" system in Europe:
- You have a group of people with something in common in one place: They are sports fans at a college, or a European gym.
- They say their school/gym is better than the other local gym, and the other school/gym says "no way" so they decide each school/gym will send their best players to play each other.
- The rest of the school/gym shows up to watch.
- The loser wants to play again.
- The school/gym says "all those people who showed up to watch? If they paid us a buck each to watch, we could buy matching uniforms for our team and even if we lost, we'd look better than them!"
- Now people are paying to watch, but how do you keep non-paying people from watching? You put a fence and a gate around the playing field!
- Then the school/gym is like "we need to get better players if we want to win, what would entice the better players to come here? Let's use our ticket money for THAT!"
- And it evolves until finally, TV gets involved and instead of a few bucks for tickets and concessions, the money gets freaking huge.
The economic model for college sports is NO DIFFERENT than the economic model for Little League or high school sports. No one thinks it's shady to not pay high school kids or little league players... but there's still tickets and concession revenue. It's just tens of dollars instead of tens of millions of dollars.
Little league and high school coaches are usually volunteers who do it in their spare time. College coaches are making millions and flying around in private jets. That’s the difference
The NCAA has always been reactive and not pro-active. They make changes based on "how do we deal with what's happening now?" instead of "what can we do to make this the best model possible?"
College sports isn't "tied to schools" because someone had this great idea to create a business of college sports, it evolved very much like the "athletic club" system in Europe:
- You have a group of people with something in common in one place: They are sports fans at a college, or a European gym.
- They say their school/gym is better than the other local gym, and the other school/gym says "no way" so they decide each school/gym will send their best players to play each other.
- The rest of the school/gym shows up to watch.
- The loser wants to play again.
- The school/gym says "all those people who showed up to watch? If they paid us a buck each to watch, we could buy matching uniforms for our team and even if we lost, we'd look better than them!"
- Now people are paying to watch, but how do you keep non-paying people from watching? You put a fence and a gate around the playing field!
- Then the school/gym is like "we need to get better players if we want to win, what would entice the better players to come here? Let's use our ticket money for THAT!"
- And it evolves until finally, TV gets involved and instead of a few bucks for tickets and concessions, the money gets freaking huge.
The economic model for college sports is NO DIFFERENT than the economic model for Little League or high school sports. No one thinks it's shady to not pay high school kids or little league players... but there's still tickets and concession revenue. It's just tens of dollars instead of tens of millions of dollars.
Right, you're proving my point though: The MODEL is the same, it's just the dollar amounts that are different.
What stops a town Little League from paying a coach $4 million per season?
Only the fact that if you add up all the people watching that team and how much money they'll contribute to watch that team and have them win, that it's no where near the amount needed to have a $4 million coach.
But if that Little League team had 8 million fans contributing $200 million to the team, that Little League team would look a lot like Ohio State, Texas A&M, Alabama, etc.
The academy system would build their own facilities, pay their own bills, and not eat up such a portion of school budgets. If there were a football league where the Ann Arbor Wolverines played the Columbus Buckeyes and there was no attachment to either of the schools, but everything else was exactly the same, fine. Operate like a business. High schools I am a bit more ambivalent on, as they are conceivably accessible to everyone, but even there, the football fields, gyms, baseball fields, tracks.... that's money that could be put to better use at a school.
But the whole fact of the matter is, with the exception of maybe hockey, any kid with athletic prowess gets asked "where are you going to play in college?" Screw that. Colleges have their role, and creating, sustaining athletic pipe dreams is not one of them. If the pro leagues want a development system, they can develop it and look after it. Colleges should not be using the resources they do for facilities etc. that are only accessible by less than 2% of the student body.
If you can play, and someone wants you to play for them, and possibly pay you, great. But your SAT score or whether you missed 3rd period Science should not factor into it, nor should you have to go through a calculus charade just because you can get to a QB.
Sports academies can handle sports, let schools do what they are supposed to do.
Little League isn't tied to a school. No need to go further than that.
Little league and high school players are underage which means there much more regulations regarding what they can and cannot do i.e labor laws . What college football fans like you do is pay make believe that college students aren’t legal adults and there rights associated with tent.Right, you're proving my point though: The MODEL is the same, it's just the dollar amounts that are different.
What stops a town Little League from paying a coach $4 million per season?
Only the fact that if you add up all the people watching that team and how much money they'll contribute to watch that team and have them win, that it's no where near the amount needed to have a $4 million coach.
But if that Little League team had 8 million fans contributing $200 million to the team, that Little League team would look a lot like Ohio State, Texas A&M, Alabama, etc.