Is Jaden Rashada The New Sheriff In Town?

By now you’ve likely heard that earlier this week Bulldog backup quarterback Jaden Rashada has filed suit against Florida coach Billy Napier and a prominent Gator booster, alleging that they reneged on promises related to an NIL deal during his recruitment.

The federal lawsuit accuses Napier and Gator booster Hugh Hathcock of a variety of awful sounding behavior: fraudulent misrepresentation and inducement, aiding and abetting fraud, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, tortious inference with a business relationship or contract, and aiding and abetting tortious interference. The complaint seeks a jury trial and damages of at least $10 million.

Rashada as you may recall was a five star recruit in the class of 2023. He initially committed to Miami, and his suit alleges that he did so after the Hurricanes’ surrogates promised a $9.5 million NIL deal.

It also alleges that Napier and Hathcock promised Rashada a $13.85 million NIL deal, a deal that as it turned out violated NCAA bylaws. Florida had been under NCAA investigation regarding its recruitment of Rashada, until the NCAA paused all such investigations in response to lawsuits filed by Attorneys General from Tennessee and Virginia.

The lawsuit alleges that Napier vouched for the Gator collective and said Rashada would receive $1 million on National Signing Day. However that didn’t happen, and the lawsuit alleges that the payments from the Gator Collective never materialized (that Collective has since been disbanded). After repeated delays, Rashada alleges that the contract was terminated without warning, leaving him signed to play at Florida but without the compensation he’d been promised in order to do so. He requested and was granted a release from his Florida letter of intent and played last season at Arizona State, before signing with Georgia this spring.

Obviously the first, most obvious reaction to this situation is “LOLGATORSHAHAHAHA.”

That isn’t necessarily something I want to discourage you from. At times it has seemed like Billy Napier is a man who steps on every rake he can find and then swings by the hardware store to restock weekly. All indications from 2024 were that the Gators got their NIL system smoothed out to some extent after the Rashada debacle. But they’re still going to have some recruits who are apprehensive about signing with a coach who stands accused of lying to secure a player’s signature. We say all the time that college football is now a business. And you don’t do business with people you can’t trust. It’s a truism as old as commerce itself.

The situation is also made a little funnier (and a little more uncomfortable frankly) by the fact that Rashada is now at Georgia. Reports indicated that Rashada asked for Kirby Smart’s input before suing and, at a minimum, wasn’t told not to do it.

Again, initial reaction: “Man, Kirby really hates Florida.” However this sounds more like a situation in which Coach Smart didn’t choose to stand in the way of one of his players exercising his legal rights. As John Talty notes in the video above, this lawsuit was in the works long before Jaden Rashada transferred to Georgia. A complaint of this type requires a lot of investigation and strategizing before it ever sees the light of day. So while it would be hilarious to see a Georgia Bulldog player recover millions of dollars from the head coach of the Florida Gators and well-heeled Gator boosters, I expect Kirby Smart’s involvement in this matter will be overblown and overpublicized relative to his actual place in it (namely, being told it was coming so he wasn’t blindsided).

This lawsuit is guaranteed to be a distraction, one Coach Smart is likely going to spend precious time minimizing. In that respect it doesn’t help him. $14 million isn’t going to bankrupt Florida football. The University of Florida and the school’s athletic department are not defendants, and so far as I can tell Rashada doesn’t allege that anyone other than Napier and one player personnel assistant did anything wrong. So there’s very little upside for the annoyance this will cause Bulldog staff and fans. You can safely put away your tinfoil hats. This isn’t a Kirby Smart psyop against Billy Napier.

I think the more fascinating aspect of this lawsuit is what it means for college football and NIL going forward. The first couple of years of NIL were a true Wild West situation. Players weren’t yet sure what they could demand or even how to make the ask. Schools weren’t sure how involved (if at all) they could be in the process. And boosters and coaches immediately worried that their cash-flush rivals were about to buy the services of every blue chip player in America.

Now however some of the blurry edges of the regulatory map are being filled in. And we’re seeing that some of those boosters were writing checks they only hoped they could cover. Jaden Rashada was not the first recruit or the last to be sold a bill of goods in the chaotic early days of NIL.

If he succeeds in validating his claim for what he was (allegedly) promised, it will have profound effects on the world of college sports. Fudging, boasting and outright lying to recruits has been a part of the fabric of college athletics almost from the beginning. However for most of the past century there was very little recruits could do about it. The NCAA and conferences allowed coaches to limit transfer options. And it’s pretty hard to sue for the brand new Mustang you were surreptitiously promised by a booster who is careful not to leave a paper trail.

Now, for the first time, college athletes may be able to hold coaches and boosters to their wild promises in a court of law. That’s likely to have two consequences. One, it’s going to rein in some of what the recruits are promised, and force the Collectives and boosters to exercise some actual restraint. It’s a different world when the recruits suddenly have the power to hold you to what you promised. That’s probably going to create at least a little fiscal discipline and a lot more paperwork.

Second, it’s going to force coaches to think long and hard about how they work with the Collectives. Much of the reason Billy Napier is a party to this lawsuit is the fact that he allegedly vouched for the folks from the Gator collective. It’s one thing to say “John’s a helluva ‘Dawg/Gator/Buckeye/Sooner” but it’s something very different to say “I’d encourage you to go into business with John, he’s trustworthy.” Clarifying the difference may now be a multimillion dollar task.

In short, coaches and boosters are about to have to cross some t’s and dot some i’s to make sure they don’t end up on the wrong side of a courtroom. And that’s probably a necessary thing. If it wasn’t Jaden Rashada, it would have been another player, and there likely will be other lawsuits like this one filed fairly soon. That’s bad from a public relations standpoint. But it’s necessary to clarify the landscape of NIL. Like a marshal in an old Western Jaden Rashada and his legal team, win or lose, are going to provide some answers about what can and can’t be done in the Wild West of NIL. Somebody has to do it. Until later…

Go ‘Dawgs!!!