Gene Smith Says It Has Become Common For High School Recruits To Ask For $5,000 Just To Visit Campus
Get the fuck outta here. $5000 just to come on an official visit? And the worst part of the whole thing.....it's LEGAL. Take me back to the days where these kids just wanted promises of sexy women, duffle bags of cash, and free cars. I was in on NIL when it first came about, but I'm so out on what NIL has become that I may need to become out on it all together.
Am I crazy or was the whole idea of name, image, and likeness that colleges and television and video games were making money off individual players, but the kids were seeing none of it? Like, I think we can all, every single person in America, agree that if USC puts a Caleb Williams jersey in the team shop, and USC fans buy the fuck out of it, that Caleb Williams should get some money. But on the flip side, I'm not sure there's a human on this planet that thinks these 18 year old kids should be able to demand $5000 to even come grace you with their presence as you wine and dine them to recruit them to your school.
Am I crazy or are Official Visits already paid for by the schools? Like, I was a 0-Star recruit out of Northeast Ohio so I get that I can't speak from experience, but these kids aren't having a bad time on their recruiting trips. I got a buddy that coaches college ball down at an unnamed AAC school that just gave Alabama a run for their money, and he said recruiting weekend is filled with yachts, steaks, jet skis, and hot girls. And that's not just for the players. They bring their families too. And they don't spend a DIME. So in what fucking world do these programs need to pay them on top of offering all of that? If this continues, why would a recruit EVER commit early? Go on as many visits as you can. Take their money. Lie to them. Collect the cash. Eat their food. Stay in their hotels. And then go wherever you want. Take their money to do so. And then still leave if you want!!!
Like, do you remember this?
Fucking absurd. But all the credit in the world to Quinn Ewers for pulling off the heist of the century.
Gene Smith said this quietly today in a hearing on Capital Hill, but it needs to be shouted from the roof tops. College sports are getting RUINED.
Credit to Gene Smith and Ohio State. The current landscape of NIL makes the rich richer and the poor irrelevant. It would benefit us to continue to allow such practices, but being the gentlemen and the scholars that we are, we are trying to do what is RIGHT, not what is easy.