Lots of teams are signing a bunch of high school recruits, but why?
- Option 1: Recruit a bunch of high school players and hope they stay. Per the rumor mill, we pay them $75K to sign. By far, most of them don't see the field in any meaningful way their first two years, and once they do become meaningful players (meaning they get playing time and show they can contribute), they can enter the portal and leave.
- Option 2: Recruit only a few high school players (e.g., the top players in the state) and instead focus your NIL money on portal players. Pick players from the portal that fill positions you need.
For Option 1, we're basically the farm club for other teams, where we spend time and money getting the player up to speed, and then they leave (e.g., Jason). Am I missing something, such as does the $75K for new recruits come from a different bucket of money than the NIL for portal players?