High school coach of 5-star recruit that spurned Tennessee details the role NIL played in the decision
The Tennessee Vols missed on one of their top 2024 recruiting targets earlier this month when five-star defensive lineman Williams Nwaneri committed to the Missouri Tigers. Nwaneri is rated as the No. 1 defensive lineman in the nation. There's been some speculation that a new state law in Missouri — which reportedly allows in-state high […]
The Tennessee Vols missed on one of their top 2024 recruiting targets earlier this month when five-star defensive lineman Williams Nwaneri committed to the Missouri Tigers.
Nwaneri is rated as the No. 1 defensive lineman in the nation.
There's been some speculation that a new state law in Missouri — which reportedly allows in-state high school players to profit from NIL deals once they've signed a financial aid agreement with an in-state program — was a major factor in Nwaneri's decision.
Nwaneri's high school football coach Jamar Mozee (who oddly enough was teammates at Oklahoma with Vols head coach Josh Heupel) spoke to The Athletic this week about the role the NIL played in the decision.
“It passed, so that is an advantage for them,” said Mozee about the new NIL law in Missouri. “But it wasn’t like (Nwaneri) couldn’t get a good NIL deal at other places either."
“Everyone has their own measure of (NIL)," added Moose. "All the schools he was interested in had their own level of NIL, and it was competitive — as it should be. That factor allowed him to pick the school he wanted to be at. With all of them being competitive, he would have been fine anywhere he went. And I think people don’t understand that. He picked the school that he wanted to go to because it was all competitive.”
I don't doubt that the deals were all competitive — big-time programs with collectives don't seem scared to throw around some serious cash. But it's hard to believe that the best defensive lineman in the nation picked Missouri over Tennessee, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Georgia without outside factors factoring in to the decision. And the ability to earn a substantial amount of cash while still in high school is certainly attractive to nearly every teenager in the nation — whether or not they play sports.
I mean, the only reason Missouri passed this NIL law is to benefit players who stay in state. Kudos to The Show Me State — they showed us all how to quickly become relevant in the exclusive world of five-star recruits.
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