Barry Tompkins: NIL issues continue to plague college sports

I’ve danced around the issue a few times in this weekly yarn and was pretty determined to just accept it as a fact of life and stop whining about it.

But the strange case of Jaden Rashada keeps bringing me back to the head shaking portion of my concern about what’s happening these days in college sports. Predominantly in football, but extending deeply into basketball as well.

Jaden Rashada played quarterback at three different high schools, including his junior and senior seasons at Pittsburg High School in the East Bay. He was the No. 29 overall prospect in the 2023 recruiting class and amongst a handful of elite quarterbacks. Everyone I’ve asked about him tells me he’s inherently a good kid.

But, in the Wild, Wild West that is college sports these days, it’s not hard for “good kids” to be easily convinced that the road to the NFL is paved with gold, long before draft day.

NIL (Name, image, and likeness) has changed the landscape of sports. In the past, a place like Stanford used a Stanford education as its greatest recruiting tool. Notre Dame had every parish priest in America recruiting for them. USC used being in an entertainment mecca and cozying up to the Hollywood “swells” as a lure for athletes.

And, of course, there were the “bandit” schools in the SEC and other conferences who whose boosters would blatantly offer up what was called the $100,000 handshake.

Recruiting has always been an ugly business, often run by bottom line people whose athletes were little more to them than indentured servants necessary to fill the athletic department coffers.

That’s why I have always been of the belief that college athletes should be paid, because of what they bring to their university both in prestige and in the bank account.

But being paid and what’s going on right now is the difference between getting an allowance and being a partner in a hedge fund. And Jaden Rashada could be the poster boy for everything that’s bad in college athletics.

In another era, Cal might have been the ideal spot for a kid who played almost literally in the shadow of Memorial Stadium. A guy like Rashada could have turned the football program into an upward cycle that it hadn’t seen in years. Cal had about as much chance to land Rashada as South Dakota State. The Bears were out of the running as soon as the first comma was added to the NIL dollars today’s incoming freshmen expect to get.

The University of Miami stepped up to the table with a promise of $9.5-million in NIL money (or, two commas more than the Bear’s could afford). Rashad verbally committed.

Miami paid him $150 thousand as a good faith measure to assure his signing a bonding commitment on letter of intent day. But guess what? Florida upped the ante to $13.85-million, which included a job for his dad. This time, Florida head coach Billy Napier assured the Rashadas that a check for $1 million dollars in “good faith” money would be forthcoming before signing day. It wasn’t. So what’s a high school kid to do?

I don’t know how much money Jaden Rashada got to play his freshman season at Arizona State. I know it wasn’t “chump change,” but it was also literally and figuratively not in the same league as Florida.

Turns out that Rashada played four games at ASU before missing the remainder of the season with an injury. Despite three high schools and commitments to four colleges, he still has four years of eligibility remaining. And he’s not likely to see much action at Georgia this year because of the presence of incumbent quarterback Carson Beck.

But this week he struck what could be a mighty blow against the outrageous financial battle in wooing football and basketball prospects to the benefit of a few and the detriment of virtually everybody else. Rashada is suing the Florida Gators and their coach Billy Napier for a failed name, image, and likeness deal worth $14 million.

At the very least, maybe somebody who can do something about it will take notice and recognize that while the rich get richer (to the joy of television networks) 80% of colleges and universities are left to flounder in mediocrity.

There are no rules. If a school other than those with the deepest pockets does stumble across someone who turns out to be a player that could be a cornerstone for the program,  the “money” schools can legally approach him or her and literally make an offer they can’t refuse. It happens every day in college sports.

I don’t begrudge Jaden Rashada. I think he should get everything he can the way things are now. He doesn’t have to change, the system does.

And maybe this law suit will rattle enough cages that the ridiculous takes at least a meaningful turn back toward the sublime.

Losing a good one

Jim Otto died this week.

I know there aren’t a lot of readers out there who remember him as the center of the Oakland Raider football teams of the 60’s and 70’s, but he probably personifies what the image of that football team was at the time.

I was an impressionable kid just starting in the broadcast business around the time that the image of the swaggering bad guys from Oakland was honed. And the truth be told, almost to the number they were good guys who loved being hated by everyone else around the league.

Jim Otto was their leader. He defined the term “warrior.” At the end of every game his face was a bloody mess. The equipment then wasn’t what it is now and he’d take on so many defensive tackles on a Sunday afternoon that his face mask would smash against his head just above his nose and the blood flowed. For 15 years, that cut never healed.

But behind that bloody face was one of the kindest men I ever met. He was the personification of what Will Rogers once said. He never met a man he didn’t like.

Nor one who didn’t like him.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native.  Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.