WVSports - Four-star LB Trotter pledges to West Virginia Mountaineers football
WVU has landed another valuable pledge in the 2023 class with the commitment of Philadelphia (Pa.) LB Josiah Trotter.
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WVSPORTS.COM Four-star LB Trotter pledges to West Virginia Mountaineers football
- Thread starter Keenan Cummings
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“Trotter, 6-foot-2, 225-pounds, named a final five of West Virginia, Clemson, Penn State, Virginia Tech and South Carolina and announced his pledge to the Mountaineers on his birthday.”
Surely you jest! I was assured here that the reality of NIL would never allow us to be mentioned in the same sentence as Clemson, PSU and an SEC school again!
Surely you jest! I was assured here that the reality of NIL would never allow us to be mentioned in the same sentence as Clemson, PSU and an SEC school again!
The biggest concern with the NIL is Player retention. If this kid Honors this verbal commitment and excels at Wvu there isn't anything stopping a deep pocketed program from offering an NIL deal to transfer. This is the biggest worry that coach's at the Wvu's of the world will be facing going forward. Recruiting out of high school might actually get better for the wvu's of the world mainly because the blue bloods will probably offer more scholarships to proven players at the college level as opposed to taking a chance on someone out of high school.
As we know, NIL deals on average are very small (FWIW, I have spent 8 years in sports licensing, including collegiate and NFLPA merch, and this was by no means a surprise). There is a select few picking up life changing amounts of money, and in football those that are picking it up are typically highly sought after QBs and RBs, even if they aren’t even a “sure thing”, as our current QB picked up a $1m deal and ended up being QB2 last season. If this LBer actually shows up here and excels, what exactly is going to change that wasn’t available to him right now from PSU and Clemson? Are you suggesting he wants to come here, drive up his NIL asking price, so those schools will come back and offer more? Why not just go there and play well and get a deal?
As for the elite players commanding the huge money, we were never getting those types anyway. Even Grier landed here in an unusual way, and while he was good, a late 3rd round QB is not exactly a generational talent for a program like Bama. So right now programs like Bama, UGA, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, are seemingly stashing an endless amount of NFL caliber talent they can win national titles with on their benches. Judging by the movement of QBs I expect the liquid market to benefit programs like ours as these kids don’t want to sign up for a Bennett/Daniels, Hurts/Tagovailoa, Mayfield/Murray, Miller/Barrett/Jones, Bryant/Lawrence situation. There is a good chance other position groups are trending in the same direction, I frankly haven’t looked yet. I suspect that’s why we have seen some recent outcry from Saban and Dabo as they can’t swindle kids any longer by promising them the world and being 2 deep with NFL caliber talent at every position. While it’s true they can essentially “buy” elite talent, they don’t have the payroll to keep an entire 2 deep happy, and depth more so than elite players has been the secret sauce to the sustained success of a program like Bama.
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A player doesn't need to pick up what you phrase as life changing money to go play for someone else. There are some starting O Lineman on Nebraska set to make a 100K this year. You can't ride off into the sunset with just 100K but how many 18-22 year old's have 100k lying underneath their mattress? 50K would be a large sum to these kids. Kids in this age group jump from one job to another for 50 cents more an hour. You also have to take into consideration that these kids don't have a mortgage or rent payment so after taxes this is disposable income for them. You need more than just a QB to win a championship. Some Teams that have won championships didn't have great qb play but what they all have in common is elite level O Line and D Lineman. Blue blood programs have large booster bases willing to throw large amounts of money to get what they perceive are the best players. In a few years from now every player that is on the two deep of a blue blood program will probably be earning something. As far as this individual commitment we don't how hard the other schools mentioned were recruiting him. They might have considered him as plan B. If he comes here and performs, they might come back in a couple of years with a suitcase full of cash trying to pry him away. This is what is worrying coaches at programs like wvu.
I think you miss the point of most fans' concerns. How many 4 and 5 star players fizzle out or just turn out to be average? Recruiting college football, just like NFL drafting, is not an exact science. The best way to know if a player is good is to see them on the field against a level of competition as close as possible to what your team competes against. So now coaches can recruit with a more exact science by looking at other FBS teams' rosters
Slaton was a 2 star RB prospect and Gwaltney was a 5 star RB. After watching them play though, it was Slaton that gave 5 star results and would've been a welcome addition on almost any team in 2006 and on. Now imagine is Slaton could've just transferred at will?
The NIL and ease of transfer may actually help teams like WVU in recruitment from high school, but has the potential to be even more of a liability in regards to retention. The best of the best 5 stars are still the blue bloods for the picking, but the lower 5's and the 4's may be more likely to go to a place they think the competition to see the field is less knowing that they could move up at any time if they perform.
Say you have a 4 star player wanting to go to OSU or Penn State. Before this era, that player would have to go to that school even if he was worried he couldn't beat out the starters because the player was actually committed to that school. Now that player can go to the WVU's of the world thinking he will have a better chance of seeing the field early. If that player turns out to be elite, he can go to his dream school or to a "contender" later. If the player doesn't turn out to be elite, he can be the big man on campus at a mid tier school. Win-win for the recruit.
However for WVU, any possibility of competing for a national championship has always been dependent on a great coaching staff who can take a handful of elite players along with some solid role-players to scheme/luck them into a long shot chance. WVU was never going to pull in 4+ star rated recruiting classes year in and year out to consistently compete at that level. So now when the coaching staff manages to find the few "diamond's in the rough" or highly rated players that choose WVU, keeping them for the 3 years it takes to build a team around just got a lot harder. And if WVU did want to have another outside shot at the NC like the 1988 or 2007 football teams, it can not afford to lose ANY elite players.
Care to share the story of the OL from Nebraska making $100k? I can’t find anything on it, I just found that apparently NU will have $850k go to 90 athletes across 5 sports for an average of $9444. Not really much higher than the the $5k WVU itself is willing to pay for maintaining a 2.0 before any NIL deal comes into play. As I have said, the vast majority of these deals are peanuts. The $50-$100k deals you are so worried about are going to players that we would have never gotten under the old rules anyway and now reloading is getting more problematic as guys such as our former star Tykee Smith, registered a mere 6 tackles after leaving us for UGA and presumably for boatloads of cash and everything else good in the world. You don’t think WVU is pointing to him as a cautionary tale, as well as targeting other great players like him that can’t make it on the field there?
Bottom line is you don’t know how this will play out, if it will be good or bad for WVU. Why don’t you just wait until we have a few years of results? We have seen mostly guys making lateral or down transfers over PT concerns, is there any on record transfer yet where a guy left WVU and picked up a ton in NIL other than Oscar… who Huggins publicly beefed with?
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Paragraph 1 & 2 - As I have stated numerous times, it’s a 2 way street. If anyone has a ballpark figure of how many actual proven commodities are transferring “up” and if NIL is a factor in the decision, it would be welcome. We are all blind mice bickering at each other in the dark without that info, and finding one off scenarios trying to prove our point. As for Slaton, and also White after their freshman years, I will say it likely would have been tempting for them. That said, I would be surprised if they would have found a better situation. Remember, we ran an at the time ahead of the curve offense, that both players were perfect for. I don’t know what bigger programs would have ran an offense perfectly suited for them, as well as had no one else on the depth chart to compete with, as well as promise a stadium full of “10” and “5” jerseys and make them the most recognized faces in a state.
Paragraph 3 & 4 - There has not been enough time to conclusively say if this is happening or not, will revisit this in a few years.
Paragraph 5 - Cincy just did it for 4 years, so why can’t we exactly?
Schedule is irrelevant when the NFL is inviting 8 of their guys to the combine, confirming the talent level they accumulated.
![[eyeroll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/rolleye/rolleye0011.r191677.gif "Eye roll [eyeroll]")
Surely you know most players invited to the combine get drafted. So when all 8 get drafted this can just go up on your wall of shame of idiotic remarks.
Surely you know all.
I heard it on a sports radio show. Casey Thompson Left Texas for NIL opportunities. If you are a starter on the Nebraska football team you can earn up to six figures. Most of this money is not coming from NU directly its from the boosters. Its clear that you don't comprehend what is going on. I find it hard to believe that you worked in sports licensing and you don't see what's happening. Even Nick Saban and Dabo have expressed concerns over this. Here is an interview with Casey Thompson explaining NIL at Nebraska. It starts at the 35 minute mark
So Casey Thompson, left the richest program in the country, to transfer to Nebraska for NIL? Yea I’m not buying that. More likely after going 5-7 Texas ran him off, and someone told him he can make 6 figures if he is the starting QB and the team is winning, which would be the case here and most places as well.
In the world of pro sports player licensing, there are only really lucrative merchandise opportunities if it’s the star player on a winning team. Not the 2nd best guy, every so often there are few exceptions for heavily followed team brands behind the player like the Cowboys or Steelers for example. For college, it figures to be even more top heavy than that, as a college fanbase doesn’t really start moving the needle unless they are winning at an unusually high rate (like WVU pushing for a national title). So the players that are genuinely valuable in a 6+ figure way for marketing/merchandising, are pretty much only going to be the Heisman finalists. The exceptions are going to be the viral sensations like Doug from St Peters, and that is more about the novelty of his story, rather than because of St Peters Basketball as a brand or his actual talent level.
Understandably, boosters want to help the team win and NIL to them is an opportunity to help the coaches get players, but as you can see from Here NU have paid out $850k for 90 athletes across all sports thus far. The number is likely to grow as they have raised $3.5, but you get the point, $3.5m for an entire AD, that’s not even the payroll of an MLS team let alone a football team with 80+ on it. So my point is people need to cool their jets worrying about the big boys stealing their players, none of these fanbases have the money to keep an entire 2 deep happy, so expect more transfers down than up.
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I can't help but notice that WVU picked up a Canadian player that no one thought was any good and over 2 years turned that player into a rock star defensive lineman. Undoubtedly the best defensive player on the team and he got poached away. While WVU gets a QB big programs were super high on in recruitment, but a combination of injuries and being outplayed by others on the roster led to him coming to WVU. Seems exactly like the scenario I was describing where the players at WVU that would be a guaranteed starter or at worst strongly push for a starting job at any FBS program will be tempted away the moment they get to the level of being able to provide dividends to the program while the transfers in are either from lower levels or the scraps the other programs cast off. When guys like Trotter start having Luke Kuechly like results and stay at WVU while players like Schmitt are being brought up, becoming solid contributors, and stay within the program to again give WVU another 2005-2007 like run ... then your theory of the transfer portal and NIL era of college football will hold water. But so far it looks more like the concerns I have voiced have actually happened and your optimism is still theoretical.
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