WR Williams to Baylor .
- Thread starter jimarnp
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I agree. Franklin hasn't shown a good track record judging and picking talent from High school WR's. How many are on the roster now that never turned out good?
Do you have evidence of that? I read an article in December that listed colleges by NIL dollars and PSU was 12th.
I don’t trust any article written by anyone about how much NIL money colleges have. It was obvious for years that teams in the south were paying kids before this even existed so it’s not hard to believe that other people are still supporting teams without dumping money into an NL collective.
Here’s what I know about Baylor, one of my fellow basketball coaches said that both their men’s and women’s teams have been offering their players money for quite some time. He attended the coaching clinic where people associated with the program basically said that they feel they are Able to compete to get any player that they want.
Therefore, I would not surprise me if the football team started to see similar benefits.
Here are some curious facts to ponder
Largest alumni organization PSU
Most alumni CEOs PSU
Top 20 Universities by Endowments (PSU NOT ON LIST)
Top 20 Universities by millionaire graduates (PSU NOT ON LIST)
OHIO STATE AND OREGON NOT ON THOSE LISTS EITHER.
Yet OHIO STATE and OREGON killing PSU in NIL.
OREGON has one Sugar Daddy. Not OHIO STATE.
🤔
I think unless you are top 5 in NIL Bankrolls you are going to lose more recruiting battles to the cherry pickers of the football world. PSU betting on NCAA action to clean up the mess seems as stupid as the impotent NCAA is period.
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Yeah, I think we have more NIL than most P5 programs, but clearly lagging behind the NIL superpowers like Oregon, the Texas schools, Miami, OSU, Bama, etc.
Funny to see Phil Knight reportedly authorize unlimited NIL to get whatever Oregon needs to win a title. that's the kind of approach that threatens to ruin the sport. But time will tell to see how sustainable or successful that is. Texas A&M took that approach for a year, and it went nowhere.
We're on par with Michigan and probably Notre Dame and USC in the NIL game. Not elite, but not exactly lacking. Our problem is that our WR recruiting is objectively sub-par, and our WR on-field productivity is no different. Sure, Baylor might be able to throw some extra money at a Taz Williams, but I'd imagine we win that battle regardless if we actually had a reputable WR program to sell him.
The reputation is the bigger issue here for sure
And kids make decisions for countless reasons. Is his girl going there? Are his friends? Did he mesh better with the coaches? There's infinite possibilities beyond NIL. My issue is people immediately blame NIL for everything now. It's just absurd. If NIL is an issue then Franklin needs to work some magic and get money. It's his responsibility but I don't believe NIL is an issue at all.
If Baylor goes all in for a player many believed was 5th-7th on our board, what do we do? He's never been on campus. It's obviously a strict "they sent the biggest offer" type of deal.
We got Dotson and Washington recently having good careers and getting drafted. Multiple 10 win seasons.
Baylor has what recently?
They offered the biggest bag last minute, apparently. Unless you start throwing stupid $$, everyone will lose those more often than not.
Caveat, I'm not saying our WR is perfect. It was terrible last year and maybe that sticks out. Still, nobody picked Baylor because they developed WRs. The kid had 55 offers (reportedly the most offered prospect in this class). He never even stepped foot there. Then 2 nights before decision day, he's picking a school he's never mentioned.
Nothing is obvious. You're guessing. If anything he'd have used that to tell Penn State they needed to get more money for him or he'd go to Baylor
Also why is it difficult to believe that maybe he liked Baylor better than Penn State? Kids make decisions for countless reasons not just money.
This is only "obvious" to those that want to bitch nonstop about NIL. If we don't have enough NIL money that's a failure on Franklin but I don't buy that for a second.
His friend convinced him to go and they had NIL but I don't think significantly more than us. Difference is he wanted to play with his friend and Baylor a lot closer to him.
The issue is we cannot recruit WRs at the level we get other position guys. Cyrus is a 90 and in-state. Not good enough for a OSU to swoop him up or Bama or Georgia or Oregon. Tailor made for us and we drop the ball (like that pun?!). We had to have the same amount of NIL as South Carolina. The Maryland kid liked our NIL and he is the same rating as Cyrus.
kids don't pick schools they've never visited or mentioned, ever, unless *something* happened. You can call it guessing, but what is there to like about a school you didn't visit? Best phone call ever? His friend?
I'm not bitching about NIL. I'm acknowledging that it's obvious that the most likely scenario here is NIL played a part. You would have to be intentionally obtuse and deflecting to not acknowledge a kid committing to a school he's never visited is weird.
Again, if this was a school he visited, your what ifs would hold weight. When the first mention of Baylor in his recruitment was a Baylor-related twitter page claiming "a NIL offer was made and now Baylor is in the mix", why argue?
His friend influenced him. He is 17. It's not like he committed to a school in Europe or some far away place. Who knows how often he unofficially was at Baylor. He lives in Texas.
I'm sure they had a good NIL deal for him but I am just saying that I don't think it was NIL and NIL alone that swayed him to Baylor. Did they just offer some enormous NIL package which was a total anomaly versus other recruits just for him? Is Baylor an NIL juggernaut? Never heard that before. We have recruited numerous 4 star guys and those higher rated than him so we must have known his price or the going rate for a 90 rated receiver. He may have raised it and we didn't increase and Baylor way overpaid. The fact that his friend committed and then he was very interested tells me it was not all about NIL.
I don't understand acting like this is unheard of....and of course he got NIL money just like we offered him NIL. Everyone does. Pretending that's the reason he decided...pretending nothing else was a factor is my issue
Penn State has plenty of NIL money. If Franklin doesn't want to allocate enough to him that's the decision but not the only factor.
The Golden Rule is taking over.
The programs with the NIL gold are going to rule for the foreseeable future.
I have surprised myself with how fast I have lost interest. I expect I will still watch some games on network TV, but I doubt I ever walk into Beaver Stadium again, nor am I likely to pay a streaming service to watch a game.
To each their own, but it boggles my mind a bit that anyone would hand over their cash to a kid to convince him to play football for Dear Ol’ State, especially when there are so many causes worthy of those donations.
I started watching college football with my Dad back in the 1960s. It was fun while it lasted.
The programs with the NIL gold are going to rule for the foreseeable future.
I have surprised myself with how fast I have lost interest. I expect I will still watch some games on network TV, but I doubt I ever walk into Beaver Stadium again, nor am I likely to pay a streaming service to watch a game.
To each their own, but it boggles my mind a bit that anyone would hand over their cash to a kid to convince him to play football for Dear Ol’ State, especially when there are so many causes worthy of those donations.
I started watching college football with my Dad back in the 1960s. It was fun while it lasted.
This is now minor league football. College football is no more.
My question: How does NIL work? Do the coaches actually make the NIL offer to the recruit after they (the coaches) have previously communicated with the NIL collective(s) or do they first refer the recruit directly to the NIL collective(s) to discuss an offer?
Anything and everything you can think of is probably being done. And some stuff you nor I haven't thought of as well.
It's all done to "comply", but no less.
Definitely the second piece of your comment, as well as knowing that word gets around through social media via the current players. The current guys who host the recruits will let them in on who they need to talk to.
They don't need to have more NIL $ in total to outbid PSU on a single player. PSU has 50%+ blue chip ratio. Let's assume the those are the main players getting the significant NIL $. That means PSU has 50+ players wanting NIL money, lots of mouths to feed from their bucket. What is Baylor's blue chip ratio, maybe 20%? Fewer mouths to feed, so some individual players could make more than one particular guy at PSU even from a smaller total bucket.
When comparing NIL for one player the amount we have to offer could be more about how total roster NIL is distributed rather than our total NIL budget.
BTW, can we stop calling this NIL? It's payment for signing an LOI, not NIL. Glorified bribery, essentially. This isn't what NIL is supposed to be about and is technically against NCAA rules, but of course in addition to incomprehensible NCAA rules surrounding NIL, portal, etc., these days there's no enforcement of the rules that do actually exist.
It's a nice pickup. But flipping a #405 overall recruit doesn't really turn everything around just yet. A small step in the right direction.
Agree, it doesn’t fix everything but outside of the rivals ranking system he is rated much higher than 405. He in the top 150 from 247.
That is 7 commits in two classes who all are 4* by at least one service. On top of that there are two more commits in the 2026 class.
I agree, NIL is supposed to be about the player being able to receive compensation for endorsements (essentially), but it was immediately bastardized into just paying players. Realistically, maybe 1% of Power 4 players have any sort of marketability. Guys like Saquon Barkley or CJ Stroud or Joe Burrow were stars in college and could’ve landed real endorsement deals.
The whole thing is now backwards, but the NCAA really has no mechanism to enforce NIL or transfer rules. And it’s not their fault for once as the courts have ruled they don’t have the authority.
Outten doesn't seem to be #405 in Franklin's, Kotelnicki's and Hagan's priority list, and that's what counts.
He reportedly was PSU's #1 WR target.
Maybe #1 after missing out on other higher priorities?
Ratings aren't everything but this kid is the lowest rated player in this class according to Rivals (5.5). Hopefully he turns out to be better than those ratings. He's rated higher by 247.
Agree. lots of kids in the MAC end up playing at a very high level and in the NFL because the rating systems missed them. If the staff saw something that jumped out at them, I am all good. This staff has found several diamonds in the rough and is typically early in recruiting blue chippers before they get their high rating.
Seriously, the rating before a player even plays his senior year is not nearly as relevant as the updated rating once he has completed his senior season. Watching every recruiting class for decades confirms this. The quiet players that don't seek out attention nor attend the raters camps also don't get the stars. If you look at Outten's films carefully you will see the abilities he possesses and why he was bucketed into the athlete category. It is time to wait and see.
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Agreed. I've got a friend who had a son that was an excellent player in TX. The family couldn't afford or have the time to camp all over the nation. So companies started to call him and tell him that they'd manage his recruitment for a fee. If he got a Power 5 'ship offer, they would owe them X. So on and so forth. The kid was a good DB but the family didn't want him to pursue college football at the cost of a good education. The family was pretty well off (not rich but both parents worked and they had good income). They didn't want to put all of their eggs in one basket nor make a huge financial sacrifice for a 6' 188LB DB who may never pan out athletically.
My point is that stars can be and are managed. If the family doesn't play the game, they are excluded. If you don't play the game, spend the money, you won't get the stars.
Again, it's not about what Rivals thinks. It's what Franklin and his staff have on their recruiting board. And reportedly Outten ran for the staff and did a fantastic time. They also were impressed with his other workout performance. And yes, it was reported that among the WR's that PSU was actively going after, those they had contact with and that had mutual interest, that Outten was their #1 target.
Saying that there may be better WR's out there somewhere is a given. But doesn't make much sense to talk about some 5 star on the west coast that committed to USC the summer before his junior year and say PSU lost out on that player.
After Rivals told Bryan Bresee to keep Michigan and Bama in his top 5 or they would lower his overall ranking I dont trust their rankings.
Most kids are recruited and committed long before the end of their senior season. If you look beyond the ratings you'll see that Outten's offer list isn't very good except for Georgia. Of course Georgia is a big name so they must have seen some potential.
Yep. And look at Toledo's Quinyon Mitchell. He was drafted #22 (IIRC) in last year's NFL draft. Rivals had him as a two star kid. Others had him as high as a low three star. He had few offers and chose Toledo.
