Rashada, 1/11/23 UPDATENOW being Denied

Disappointing video, but echoes the thoughts and beliefs expressed in 100s, if not 1000s of comments on this board over the last six months or so.

 

The world has changed. It’s not about “kids who want to be Gators” anymore. And we can get with it, or be mediocre. That’s the story In a nutshell.

 

I stated the same thing back in post 201.

This fantasy/lie that fans have been telling themselves that its about "wanting to be a Gator" or any other school has been told for decades.
Players pick the school that offers them a scholarship, has the best potential to get them to the NFL, has quick playing time, has the best facilities and/or academics in the mind of the player and now can get them NIL.

If it were solely based on wanting to be a Gator, they would enroll and walk -on and hope they earn a scholarship. If not they would pay their own way.

 

Fred Taylor said on video, he took 50k from Georgia. This is nothing new. I’m not sure why people like to believe otherwise. Not many in this world work for free.

 

What many suspected about UF’s NIL efforts. Shameful, but not surprising.

 

A couple of things.

Sounds to me like Bama, Georgia etc had a pretty seemless transition because they just had to tweak a system of pay that was already in place.

Secondly, we all know Mullen was awkward and not the most likeable person or motivated recruiter but I wonder how much of that had to do with his knowledge of how things were done at other schools. He knew we couldn't compete with the big money schools with our setup so why try? I'm pretty salty about how he checked out but I'm willing to cut some slack because I can't see how this wouldn't have been an obstacle for him.

Makes me wonder how we landed the occasional recruiting win like Elam and Dexter.

 

As much as he was disliked in the end, Mac was vocal. He saw what support was at Bama. Maybe promises are made and not delivered at UF? I think Mullen thought he could out X&O everyone and really wanted to transition to the league. I really don't think he enjoyed recruiting. I think Elam and Dexter wanted to be Gators.

I think this NIL thing may come down to priorities for UF alumni and administration. I'm not sure they are as well aligned with football success like they are at other schools.

 

Assuming everything Pate said is true (sorry I don’t afford many in the media that honor anymore), the target is in the aperture now but still not in focus. There was some vagueness in his comments. Maybe that is being done on purpose but we still don’t really understand the structure of our NIL efforts. As an example, how does Hathcock’s Gator Guard group fit into all this?

To me it just feels like these are hard growing pains. Pre NIL, some schools already had paying players set up to run like a well oiled machine. I don’t believe that was the case for us. Now that it’s ‘allowed’, we are trying to figure it out. It’s an arms race and sounds like we have to make a decision.

Bad look for sure but however we got here, I do agree with Pate that we HAVE TO get Rashada now. Not doing so would make an already bad situation worse.

 

A Buccaneers visor.

 

Well, he's the thrown the dart that's gotten closest to the target yet . . . but his quote, "I'm going to keep my mouth shut on a lot of this story and I will tell you the whole story once we have finality one way or another," actually means he doesn't know the whole story and is waiting for it to come out so he can claim he knew all along but couldn't say.

Then he plugs his recruiting service for having it "pretty well nailed down" (which it doesn't); and then perhaps injures himself patting himself on the back for being right about something in June.

Then says (notice how generally) "The Florida Gators have to do what the Florida Gators promised to do." Pure nonsense.

"Florida better get this figured out and fixed," and "They have to reach some decisions down there, operationally, about how they're gonna' run their program." Again, pure nonsense.

Anyway, again, take his attention-seeking video for what it's worth: another chance to get clicks spouting generalizations.

It does add a good guess to the picture . . . taking 12-minutes to say what he could have said in 15-seconds. LOL!

 

Not a huge fan of his because of the apparent ego he has. Also, please wear something other than a white t-shirt

But yes on the bold part, that's his MO.

 

Some of us have been saying this for a while now but many thought it sounded like homerism to believe that we weren't playing the same money games as all the other programs. Now in fairness, you aren't going to beat a field of cheaters without cheating some yourself and I know we haven't had the success we have had in the past without pulling some shenanigans here and there but there is no way we have been doing this at an institutional/structured level as the usual suspects.

You can say that all cheating is cheating but I don't think that's always true when some schools are subjected to different levels of enforcement.

I believe spurrier ran as above board a program as possible with a few boosters acquiring talent here and there. You had to. But I've never thought for a second we had the same infrastructure of pay for play that Bama, Georgia have had and now we are seeing this to be true. I think it was the Bama/notre dame year that I really started to follow college football less and less because the talent acquisition thing along with the massive staff became too obvious an advantage for me to enjoy. This is just the next step in the process I guess.

 

Let's cut to it. Pate said Rashadas commit was based on an agreement. Per Pate UF is not honoring the agreement, as in not making the deposit.

If true - WOW, makes UF or whomever is in charge look pretty bad.

Pate said neither Napier or Rashada is to blame.

Hoo boy, this is just catastrophic to be a media story for UF and CBN at this time.

I hope Pate is incorrect, if it's true, UF is in trouble going forward until this gets straightened out.


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That's not what he said. He said if was the 3rd party not honoring an agreement. He also said it was donors that pledged money but never followed through with the donation. Because those donors felt it was beneath them to play the NIL game.

 

We should make a conference with Stanford , Vandy , Northwestern,Tulane, Boston College, Univ ofCal Berkeley and be done with it. Florida has taken more hits in the last couple years than any school I’ve seen .
Shocked if Billy hangs around very long here. And then I wonder who all the anti Napier fans think they can get in here.

 

Your argument itself points the flaws of NIL and the reason why the NCAA must step in and establish clear rules.

Napier (and UF) are not to blame.

Rashada is not to blame.

A third party not controlled in any way by UF, and not overseen in any way by the NCAA, is apparently to blame.

How can UF succeed going forward without control or oversight?

These third parties (can’t mention the C word) are setting themselves up to be Ponzi schemes and money laundering operations. If all you have is verbal communication with no control and no oversight, humans will steal money. It is human nature.

 

The "real world," for many at least, has never been a "nice" place. And TBH it does seem to be growing even more crass, more greed-crazed and more utterly unprincipled than ever. And truth to tell, it probably is nearly impossible to "succeed" at the highest level of CFB (or in any other endeavor for that matter) in today's world without selling out any remaining vestiges of institutional integrity, school loyalty or lofty academic aspiration. It's a sorry state of affairs but it is what it is. We are surrounded by other "institutions of higher learning" that have long since sold themselves to the devil and haven't looked back. They had a choice to make, and they made it. The question now for anyone affiliated in any meaningful way with the UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, is; where do your priorities lie? For some on this board and elsewhere, the answer couldn't be more obvious - to hell with everything that makes UF a great public university or even a decent place to send your kids to receive a fine education and some ethical grounding for going forward in life as a productive and honorable person. "It's the football stupid, get over it" is the bottom line and everything else is fantasy or lies or just outright bullshit.

But while we're "telling it like it is," allow me to point out a few facts for those "realists" who seem to hold the old school in such casual contempt. The administration at UF has seemingly made a decision, to this point anyway, that they are not going to join the fray at the meat market and all the pissing and moaning in the world will continue to fall on deaf ears. It is a fact that UF did go down that road once upon a time, and not being a member of the good old boy's club we got absolutely hammered by the NCAA and the SEC. Many of us who were around during those times were permanently affected by them and have no illusions about what the price of stepping into the gutter can be - on many different levels. Personally, if we can improve the functionality of our NIL mechanism while scrupulously observing state law and our own ethical standards, then great I'm all for it. I love UF FB as much as the next fan, but there are some things in life that are more important to this old Gator and people can call it what they like - but that too just is what it is.

 

I don't like how closely he associated the purported issue with "the Florida Gators " as a program but he must know at least a little something to absolve Rashada and the Gator coaching staff to make those claims. Sounds like a 3rd party issue at the moment.

I'm curious to know who exactly is responsible for the failure and to what degree a failure it was to generate funds vs sabotage via some unscrupulous characters involvement.

 

I lived in Jax for about 6 years - so more than 1/3 of my 16yo’s life. He is a jags fan. Feel like I owe it to him to be on board with them. Jags fan is a tough gig. Crazy they’re in playoffs.

 

That’s it right there in a bottom line footnote. UF and the “collective” are not one in the same, they’re two separate entities. Yet most of the time here and everywhere else they’re put forth as one and the same. The school, the athletic department and the UAA do not write checks, make wire transfers or direct deposits to players, period. Companies and “collectives” pledge/promise, draw up contracts and then make said agreed upon periodic payments to each particular player.

It not hard to figure out what likely happened here. After he surprisingly committed to Miami, a UF aligned “collective” made him a much bigger offer. He accepted the offer, flipped and ultimately signed (late in the day, first sign of a potential problem) with UF. Now before stepped foot on campus and enrolling the deal has obviously hit a major snag. The first installment of funds that was contracted with said “collective” did not hit his bank account, or it was a lesser amount. Ruiz actually said something a few weeks ago that now rings louder. He said a particular (unnamed here) “collective” was promising $$$$ out that they didn’t have or have pledged. Hmmmmm, I wonder who he was talking about???

One more thing. UF, the school and the athletic department has made a big commitment to upgrading the entire football program. They just opened a $85mil clubhouse. The new HC and his 10 assistant coaches are making more $$$ than ever at UF. The support staff is the largest in the country and UF is spending more $$$ on it than any other school. The school does not buy the players though. What a third party “collective” does or does not do is not on or up to them. If the issue going forward is wanting the school to pressure their boosters to redirect a sizable chunk of their funds to the “collective” instead, we’re gonna have a big problem. That can’t be the new model. I think that was a veiled shot at UF in the Josh Pate video.