Andy & Ari On3 - The way college football works is about to change forever | A Georgia QB sues the Florida coach
Episode Date: May 22, 2024This show is sponsored by Rhoback, the makers of the world’s most comfortable hoodies, polos and shorts. Use the code “ANDY” on Rhoback.com for 20 percent off for all new customers through the e...nd of this week.(0:00-12:59) Intro - House v NCAA(13:00-15:09) Jaden Rashada Suing Billy Napier Recap(15:10-33:11) Pete Nakos Joins(33:12-45:26) Nick De La Torre Joins(45:27-58:37) Florida's Outlook in 2024(58:38-1:00:40) ConclusionThe ACC and Big 12 have voted to approve the House v. NCAA settlement. The NCAA's Board of Directors has as well. More approvals will come, which means schools could be sharing revenues directly with athletes within the next year.What seemed unthinkable 10 years ago is on the verge of happening.Meanwhile... QB Jaden Rashada has sued Florida coach Billy Napier and Florida mega-donor Hugh Hathcock alleging fraud because Rashada didn't receive any of the money he claims he was promised during his recruitment by Florida. Rashada, a four-star prospect in the class of 2023, flipped from Miami to Florida in November 2022. He signed with Florida even though his NIL deal already had been terminated by the collective that wrote it. He claims in the suit that Napier and Hathcock assured him he'd receive $1 million upon signing with the Gators. He did not. Rashada wound up playing last year at Arizona State and has since transferred to Georgia. On3's Pete Nakos joins to discuss the case.Later, Nick De La Torre of Gators Online joins to talk about what impact the lawsuit could have on Napier and the Gators. Nick also fills us in on where Florida stands following spring practice as the Gators face a brutal schedule in a make-or-break year.Want to watch the show instead? Head on over to YouTube and join us LIVE, M-F, at 8 am et! https://youtube.com/live/NUcNGd8T7bYHost: Andy StaplesGuests: Pete Nakos, Nick De La TorreProducer: River Bailey
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to Andy Staples on three.
It's a very interesting week in college sports.
This is normally one of those times when there's not much going on,
when really we're talking about recruiting and schools hosting players
on official visits and unofficial visits.
And that's kind of what's going on right now.
Except, oh, I don't know.
The entire enterprise is changing.
Everything about how it works could be different after this week, which is just wild to think about.
So, on Tuesday, the ACC and the Big 12 and the NCAA's Board of Governors voted to approve the House versus the NCAA settlement.
This is a $2.7, $2.8-ish billion settlement
with former athletes who are suing saying,
hey, you didn't allow NIL when I played.
Where's my cut?
That's only a piece of it, though.
They will be getting back pay,
but that's not the piece of it though. They will be getting back pay, but that's not the most
interesting part. The most interesting part is this settlement includes a revenue sharing
component where the schools will share a percentage of revenue, about 22% with the athletes. Now,
they want to cap that. They also want to continue banning what they call pay for play.
We'll talk about that in a second.
Because that's not realistic.
But the bottom line is the schools will be paying the players pretty soon.
This has to get approved by more conferences. They're going to approve it.
The non-football playing Division I conferences, they got a little mad. They pushed back a little
bit over the weekend, but they're still going to approve it because they want to keep going too.
And if this gets hung up and if it goes to trial, the price goes up
considerably because the NCAA and the conferences that have been sued, which are the power
conferences, they're going to lose the case. So they know that they know they have to get a
settlement. Remember we had Charlie Baker, the NCAA president on here last week talking about
this settlement. Like that is not normal. It's not normal in any civil case, really.
The parties talking about settlements publicly. Settlements are usually handled privately.
We'll get to that part when we talk about a different civil case that's probably the one
you want to talk about because it's more salacious than this, but we got to talk about the big picture right now. We got to talk about some big picture stuff
because think about this. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, this would be unthinkable
that the schools would just be paying the athletes because they were fighting so hard against it.
Now they have no choice.
They're backed into it. They know they're going to lose this case. And it's just going to change how everything works. Before we get to what they want versus what's going to actually happen,
let's talk about what also is actually going to happen and kind of how this has to go
from here. So a lot of money is going to be diverted to the athletes. So one thing that
you probably won't see anymore is these schools that they have a pretty nice weight room. They
have a pretty nice football practice facility. And all of a sudden, they're gutting those to improve them.
Like every four or five years.
You're not going to see that anymore.
People are going to build a practice facility.
They're going to build a weight room.
They're like, this is a good weight room.
This is a good practice facility.
We're good with this.
Why do they keep doing that?
Because they had to spend the money on something. The other thing you're going to see is there'll be a shift in jobs. There's a lot of associate
athletic directors right now who don't really do anything. They're not going to have jobs anymore.
There are a lot of people in football buildings who are involved in the recruiting apparatus, they're probably not
going to have jobs anymore because the money is going to take care of a lot of the recruiting.
Now, there will be other pieces of this because I don't think this will end the idea of NIL
collectives. The collectives probably do come inside the athletic department now,
but there still probably will be outside collectives because if you try to cap this, somebody's going to try to make it possible for the athletes to get more money.
And you're not going to be able to stop it with the NCAA rules because those will then get taken to court.
Actually, they're already in court.
Multiple states are
suing over those rules. So it's going to be a very different world. There will be new jobs.
There's going to be a capologist on most football teams. And that happens whether they cap this
stuff or not. It's going to be like an NFL or an NBA team or a Major League
Baseball team. Now, Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap, but they do have people in the
office that work for the general manager who say, we can spend this, we can afford this, we can't
afford this. Because whether it's capped or not, there's no unlimited money tree for any school.
They have to spend what they have and they can't spend more than what they have.
So somebody has to decide how everybody fits within the roster.
You've seen this in this part of the NIL area.
You've seen schools making decisions on, for lack of a better term, free agent signees,
where you've got a pay scale for your whole team and your best player makes X.
And you've got somebody that you're bringing in as a potential transfer who on the market is commanding more than your best player makes.
But he's not as good as your best player, so you can't take him.
Like that's the sort of there will have to be people in personnel departments who do that, who handle
those decisions, who can advise the coaching staff, the athletic department on those decisions.
I still, it blows my mind that they're finally here. And I've been beating the drum for this for a long time. So I think I was probably a little
more accepting of this idea years and years ago. But man, it is crazy to see it happen because
it was not that long ago. I remember when Mark Emmert got the NCAA president job,
and he was actually trying to get out ahead of things.
And so he had this idea that they were going to do cost of attendance stipends because the
athletic scholar did not cover the full cost of attendance at the time. And they were going to do
stipends up to the full cost of attendance. They knew they were going to get sued, by the way.
That was part of it. It was going to be like two grand per player.
And the schools push back on this.
Like you had asked them to pay each player a billion dollars a year.
That was like 13 years ago,
14 years ago.
And now you're going to have schools kicking in like 20 to $25 million a year to pay the athletes because they have to. So how this settlement works is future athletes will be
required to opt in or opt out. If you opt out, you could challenge those rules in court. And I
think that's what will be interesting to
see going forward. Do the people who've been trying to organize the athletes get the athletes
to opt out of the settlement in mass? Because that could mess it up. There's also a possibility
that a judge says, no, you can't do this because you can't take away future athletes' ability to challenge this stuff. That's their right.
And what the plaintiff's attorneys are doing with this thing is they're trying to make it so
if the athletes opt in, they can't sue over it. And if you have enough athletes opted in,
then it disincentivizes any other plaintiff's attorneys from trying to create a class to file a class action lawsuit.
That's why they're doing that.
They're kind of working together with the schools on that.
The schools want to continue to ban pay for play.
They want to, they've got to figure out the Title IX aspects of it.
But the pay for play ban is the dumbest part of this.
You are paying athletes for their ability as athletes right now. That's what you're doing.
Your actions have told us that this is what you want to do. We don't care what you say because we see what you do. So stop pretending that you're not paying them to be athletes.
And I know why you're pretending that. You're pretending that because you're not paying them to be athletes. And I know why you're pretending that.
You're pretending that because you don't want them to be employees.
Well, that is all going to happen independent of this anyway.
Because remember, those cases are still ongoing.
And if you want contracts that are binding,
and you don't want players to be free agents constantly,
you probably have to make them employees or at least contractors.
And you're going to have to deal with the consequences of that from a payment standpoint.
So just get to that point. I realize it's hard. I realize it's something you don't want.
But if you'd like to stop getting sued, the only way to stop getting sued is to collectively bargain with the athletes. And the only way to get to where you can collectively bargain with them
is admit you're paying them for being athletes. It's okay. It's okay. It'll be fine. There's still lots of money to go around. That's why you're
doing this. That's why you're okay doing this. Because if there were no money, you would just
let this lawsuit bankrupt everybody and everybody would stop doing this stuff. But the fact of the matter is ESPN, Fox, NBC, CBS,
they're collectively paying billions of dollars to televise football games.
You want that money. So you're going to give them some football games.
The way you give them football games is you pay the football players.
It's not as complicated as they want to make it out to be,
but I get it. Baby steps for these guys that have dug their heels in and spent so long trying
to keep all the money to themselves. Baby steps. They're going to get there.
And let's be real here. They can say they want to ban pay-for-play all they want.
The genie's out of the bottle on that one.
They're going to pay the players based on their market value as players,
whether that is from the school directly, a combination of school money and NIL money,
they'll figure it out. Because the one thing they're good at doing is figuring out how to try to compete for the best
players. The other thing they used to be good at doing was colluding to keep the money from the
best players. They can't do that anymore, unfortunately. So that is where they're at.
You're going to see more conferences approve this thing. The deadline's Thursday,
so they got to get it approved. Then we'll see if a judge signs off on it if the judge signs off on
it then whole new world if the judge doesn't sign off on it they're gonna have to tweak it
and then well the clock's ticking the trial would start in January much more expensive if it goes to
trial all right I didn't realize this is this was show, by the way. I'm not a former federal
prosecutor. I'm going to lay that out there right now, unlike everybody else you see on TV talking
about court cases. But we got to talk about another court case. This is the one you probably
really want to talk about because it is highly salacious. How significant it is, we'll see but when I can write in the headline Georgia quarterback sues
Florida head coach yeah that's something we're going to talk about in this show
Jaden Rashada currently a Georgia quarterback formerly a Miami recruit a Florida recruit
an Arizona State quarterback,
has sued Florida head coach Billy Napier.
He has sued former Florida recruiting staffer Marcus Castro Walker.
He has sued Florida mega donor Hugh Hathcock and also Hugh Hathcock's since sold company.
Alleging fraud.
This is a federal lawsuit that was filed in the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola. He alleges fraud, not breach of contract, but fraud, saying that he was presented
with this deal, four years, $13.85 million. He signed it. That contract was then terminated.
And then he passed on other deals because he was going to take that deal.
He also claims that Florida, after the deal was terminated, tried to propose another deal.
We've seen text messages from Marcus Castro Walker. Those are in the complaint.
There's an accusation against Billy Napier we'll talk about in a second,
but that's not presented with any sort of evidence. It's just an accusation against Billy Napier we'll talk about in a second, but that's not presented with any sort of evidence.
It's just an accusation.
It's a very interesting situation.
I talked to Pete Nacos about this.
Pete and I have both been covering this saga since we both work for different companies.
It's a crazy, crazy ordeal. And it just took another wild twist.
Here's me and Pete talking. Jaden Rashada suing Billy Napier.
We got a weird one here. Jaden Rashada, former star recruit who was committed to Florida,
signed with Florida, signed a very big deal with
Florida's collective that was then terminated has sued Florida head coach Billy Napier
former Florida recruiting staffer Marcus Castro Walker Florida mega donor Hugh Hathcock and also
Hugh Hathcock since sold company alleging fraud. This lawsuit
was filed in federal court in Pensacola bright and early
Tuesday morning. Joined now by Pete Nacos who's been working
on this story for over a year. This is a lawsuit that has been
cooking. This is something that Rusty Hardin who's a very
famous attorney in Texas who's been working with Rashada for
quite some time. This is something that they were looking into before Jayden Rashada committed
to Arizona State. I will point out now, he has since transferred to Florida rival Georgia.
Pete, how did this get to this point where they are filing a lawsuit in federal court?
Yeah, I mean, Andy, you've covered this extensively and i have as well um this really
all dates back to november 2022 um jayden roshado flips his commitment from miami to florida
um that same night as we now see in the lawsuit and we had it reported on it in in the time uh
he signed a 13.85 million dollar deal that was set to be paid over four years. Ultimately, as this lawsuit lays out, that fell apart.
The Florida collective, the Gator collective, it's called, missed a $500,000 signing bonus on December 5th, 2022.
And they ultimately opted to terminate the contract in a letter sent to Rashada and his camp on
December 6th, 2020, 22. And we can get into it, but a lot more happened after that as well.
Yeah. And that's the thing. A lot did happen. So what Rashada is basically saying is
he's calling it fraud because he's saying that because this deal wasn't real, because they didn't pay the money that they had promised,
that he passed on other deals, specifically one with Miami. In the lawsuit, they talk about a
$9.5 million deal with Miami. Now, I know that John Ruiz, who was the booster who was handling
that deal, he has said to The Athletic, this was over a year ago that it wasn't
worth that much, but declined to say what it was actually worth. So we we've got to deal with
sort of, he said, he said in that situation, but we do know, and this is interesting, the lawsuit,
this is something that when I, so I was at the athletic when we wrote that big Rashada story.
And one of the things that we wrote about in that story was that Rashada had paid $150,000 to pay back Miami's collective.
The lawsuit shed some light on where that came from because the lawsuit claims that Hugh Hathcock, the Florida donor, wired him that money in December of 2022 to pay back John Ruiz.
Yeah, Hathcock's role was pretty big too. The lawsuit also details how in that previously summer
after Jaden Rashad had committed to Miami,
Hugh Hathcock made an offer in the range of $11 million
to try to get Jaden Rashad to flip his commitment.
And the lawsuit also lays out that Hugh Hathcock
maybe even offered Jaden Rashad his father Harlan or
shot a a job yeah and so where this gets interesting with Billy Napier because that's
that's what everybody wants to know how does Billy Napier figure into all this so if you read the
lawsuit it's a 38 page complaint there are multiple text messages from Marcus Castro Walker, who's one of the named defendants.
He was the NIL guy in Florida's recruiting office at the time.
And those, let's say this, Pete, if the NCAA rules governing NIL still existed, which right now they don't because they've been enjoined by a federal court, Florida would be cooked on that front. Yes. Because there is discussion of
payments that would be considered an inducement to enroll which was against those rules.
That's not really the issue. The issue is how involved Napier was and there's no text messages
in the lawsuit from Napier. There is an accusation and I'll throw it up there on the screen. Basically, an accusation that Hathcock
promised a million dollars. This is after the the agreement
gets nullified. Yup. That Hathcock according to Rashad's
attorneys promised a million dollars that we wired him so he
would sign with Florida on National Signing Day and
there's an accusation that Napier basically assures that money's coming to Rashada's father.
Now, we have reached out to Billy Napier.
We've not heard anything back.
I'm assuming we will get a pretty strong denial from Billy Napier about this.
And this is what he said.
He said if they had text messages or recordings i think they'd
be in the lawsuit we've also reached out to marcus castro walker and sent him a follow-up text message
that he's yet to uh comment on the one thing i want to mention when we're still talking about
this too andy is the lawsuit goes on to say that the defending castro walker leveraged the coach's
promise that napier would get it done and threatened on national signing day that if Jaden did not sign the national letter of intent with Florida, Napier could walk away from Jane Rashad entirely.
Which ultimately that's what they walked away from each other.
But right.
Yeah, it's a very interesting situation.
So let's set the scene.
This is national signing day 2022 or the early signing day for the 2023 class
in December 2022. Billy Napier is about to go up to talk at his
press conference about the signing class. Jaden Rashad his
letter of intent is not in we know now that's because this
deal got revoked, right? There's been all this back and forth,
that they're trying to make a new deal and
so he's about to go up suddenly he does not go up on time he comes out an hour later and they have
jayden rashada's letter of intent at this point yeah what happened in that hour is kind of what's
an issue in this case. Right. Yeah.
I mean,
they,
Jane Rashada never received the $1 million payment and to go back in time a little.
So I believe Andy and myself caught wind of this deal being terminated in
early December when it happened,
but we're like,
okay,
let's see how this plays out.
And then everything happened on national signing day.
And that's when I started to kind of report on this a little bit.
And then he goes to the Under Armour All-American Camp in early January
where he's all pro Gators and everything,
but then he doesn't show up to campus on time.
And that is when, if you think back to it,
that's when we start to report about him being disgruntled,
about asking for his release from his national letter of intent.
And then he obviously
ultimately was released and he lands at arizona state but that's the timeline here about about
how that relationship fell apart so chris callahan in the chat asks could florida be hoping he's
involved so he's fired because this is billy napier the tennessee method that's that's exactly
what tennessee did with jeremy pruitt so p So, Pete, this is sort of uncharted territory because, again, if those NIL rules were in effect, you've got those text messages from Marcus Castro Walker.
We know the NCAA has been on Florida's campus.
They've asked everybody about this.
Presumably, they have all that stuff too.
Right. But a federal court has issued an injunction against those rules.
Yeah.
The state of Florida just recently joined that case, which was filed by the states of Tennessee and Virginia initially.
I don't think they can do anything about this in terms of the NCAA piece of it.
But it's interesting because if it let's say
the that case had never been filed you know the court had never enjoined it if you've got Castro
Walker based on the way the NCAA rules are currently written you've got the head coach if
you've got the assistant because they can write whatever they want on the head coach and not only
did that preliminary injunction and join the current nil interim
policy but charlie baker then like two weeks later came out and said we're halting all nil
investigations and at that time we already knew the ncaa was investigating florida um
so i guess the big question obviously is everybody wants to know where this goes from here
um you mentioned earlier in the show i do believe that that Billy Napier will probably come out at some point and deny this.
And then from there,
I mean,
it's going to be a,
he said,
he said sort of situation.
And,
and obviously Jane Rashad is,
and his attorney's point of view,
they're suing for punitive damages.
He never really saw any money from that $9.5 million deal at Miami. And he certainly
didn't see any of that $13.85 million deal. At the end of the day, he got 150,000 from Hugh
Hathcock to pay back to John Ruiz. So the way this is structured to the way, the way they chose
who to sue is interesting to me as well, because they chose to sue Hugh Hathcock's company,
which he has since sold.
He sold it in 2023.
It's called velocity automotive.
And it's basically a bunch of like turnkey solutions for car dealers that
help them do their jobs better.
And a company called Velo acquired that.
And you kind of wonder,
are they trying to get the new parent company to just
stroke a check to make it go away? Here's the one thing I can't picture, even though,
and I realize you and I have been reporting on the house versus the NCAA settlement,
which was played out very publicly. Most settlements do not play out publicly. They're
very private. The idea though, that Billy Napier would ever
write a check to one of George's quarterbacks. I don't think that's going to happen. Like
I can't see that happening.
Speaker 2 So the other really big thing about the lawsuit
that stuck out to me is Florida is not named as a defendant. Correct. When we started to
hear about this lawsuit, there was quite the the there was a lot of investigating to see if they could mention florida as a defendant and then sovereign immunity comes
up and i think that's where the decision was obviously made not to include florida um but
obviously a former employee and a current employer mentioned in the lawsuit diego in the chat says
walker marcus castro walker who has since moved on to the Las Vegas Raiders, says he's going to be the fall guy.
No, he was going to be the fall guy.
Yep.
That was the plan originally.
The plan has now changed.
And we don't know what's going to happen.
The University Athletic Association, which is the athletic department in Florida, their board was actually meeting Tuesday morning when this lawsuit dropped.
So we have not heard
anything from them yet. Again, Scott Strickland, the AD not mentioned to this thing, the university
of Florida not mentioned in it. Like you said, sovereign immunity probably had a lot to do with
that. And what, you know, there's caps on damages that they would have to pay based on Florida state
law. So it's, it's definitely a, I
mean, it's a mess. Diego, a question in the chat isn't
accepting money before you sign against NIL rules. It is. But
there are no rules right now. So
and negotiating for that contract is actually completely
legal and where we stand right now um yes so yes there's state
laws that were actually potentially violated by the way the contract was structured Sam in the
chat I love the little tidbit that Pete included in his story that Kirby Smart was aware of the
lawsuit and signed off on it yeah well listen it wouldn't be college football unless you had that
level of saltiness like yes the rival of you of the coach of Florida's rival, because the guy's now on his roster, is going to get a heads up that this is getting filed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was told that Jayden Rashada's attorney, Russie Harden, has talked to Kirby Smart now a few times in the last 48 hours and believe they are even on
the phone again this morning yeah this is going to be very interesting if this ever were to get
to a discovery phase a lot more stuff would come out there's people not named in this lawsuit who
would be deposed who would probably tell their sides of the story that would that would add even more layers to this thing sure but
it is it is a giant mess now something florida has to deal with billy napier has to deal with
and we'll see how this affects him going forward because like everybody's like what does this mean
he's gonna is he gonna get fired is he gonna have to pay jayden rachetta i have no idea yeah right i couldn't tell you
couldn't tell you i mean it's obviously a really pivotal year for billy napier but
at the same time this lawsuit shows no evidence of text messages that billy napier sent um
i guess we'll have to go to discovery but there's no obviously uh exhibits attached that would
insinuate voice recordings of Billy Napier.
I think this all would have come out a lot sooner, or a check would have just been written if you had something like that.
No, I completely agree.
Yeah, I agree.
Michigan football in the chat with perhaps the most relevant question of all.
Are lawsuits going to be part of the new EAA College Football 25 video game now?
God, I hope so.
Just to make it truly authentic.
NIL collective mode, roi de gloire.
Pete Nacos, thank you for teaching us once again.
The only undefeated entity in college football is billable hours.
We will follow this case as it goes forward.
Thanks so much.
Thanks, Andy.
Now is the time to remind you, today's show is sponsored by Roback.
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roback.com. All right. So Florida did release a statement on Tuesday, not Billy Napier.
So this is from Steve McClain, who's one of the associate ADs at Florida.
We do not comment
on ongoing litigation and neither the university athletic association nor the university are named
in the complaint. The UAA will provide for coach Napier's personal counsel, and we will direct all
questions to those representatives. Now, you know who we haven't heard from yet? Those representatives
and everybody's been trying to get ahold of Billy Napier. We tried to call him. I'm sure everybody
else tried to call him, tried to call his agent. Everybody else tried to call his agent. So we've
not heard from whichever attorney is representing Billy Napier in this particular case. Interesting
stuff in the chat from you guys as you were watching this. Christopher says,
so can coaches now sue players for leaving?
Careful with this slippery slope.
Christopher, this is America.
You can sue anyone for anything.
But if a coach sued a player for leaving,
well, it would get kicked out of court immediately
and it would look bad.
So that's why they don't do it.
Samuel, Rashad and his family just chasing checks checks still don't understand why UGA signed this dude
I hope UGA didn't promise him anything I don't think UGA did promise him anything
I think at this point the NIL piece of it probably kind of dead for him now if he winds up becoming
a good player at Georgia I think there's money in that, but just an incredible situation that led him to
Georgia. Remember he did start the opener and the second game for Arizona state last year.
Cause drew pine was hurt. Jaden then got hurt. Didn't come back until the Arizona game at the
end of the season. We'll see. I mean, right now, Carson Beck's is starting quarterback at Georgia.
Jane Rashad is an insurance policy. They've also got Gunnar Stockton, who's been there.
So it could be that he winds up competing for the starting job next year. It could be that
it becomes clear he's not going to win the starting job and he winds up in another school.
We shall see. H-Town Creole, how much is he suing for? Because his lawyer, Rusty Hardin,
is mostly known for state cases rather than federal. No, Rusty Hardin is known for all kinds
of cases. Rusty Hardin very famously was involved in the steroid era of baseball. He was Roger
Clemens' attorney. He's been involved in a lot of other high-profile cases. I believe he had
Deshaun Watson fairly recently. So he's involved in a lot of other high profile cases. I believe he had Deshaun Watson fairly recently.
So he's involved in a lot of different things.
But yes, he is based in Texas.
This case is absolutely wild.
But again, it hinges on the accusation that Billy Napier made some sort of promise to Jaden Rashada or his father or both of them.
And that is the question. We've seen no evidence, but we've also not seen any sort of denial from
Billy Napier yet. It's strange that it's now been about 24 hours and you haven't gotten anything,
but maybe they're just saying, you know what? We're going to let this ride. Maybe one of the
other entities will write the guy a check and
we'll get to be done with this thing. But it's going to be interesting going forward to see,
does someone write Jayden Rashada a check? Does this go any further as far as the court case?
Does it go to a discovery phase? Because if it did, I think that's where you'd get some little juicy bits coming out but i think most of the parties involved probably
hoping that doesn't happen probably hoping a check gets written sooner rather than later
let's talk about this a little more with somebody who knows the gators very very well nick delatore
of gators online how we doing nick awesome just great andy it's it's always it's always positive news when have I ever had you
on for anything positive like I know in Florida beat Tennessee last year you were busy so Zach
Alverde your your your partner at Gators online I had him on I feel like you're the dark cloud
yeah you you had me on after Kentucky.
I remember doing that one from the Airbnb in Lexington.
No, no, I think I'm just the Grim Reaper for Florida
when it comes to the Andy Staple show.
Well, listen, it's not personal.
It's really more just kind of percentages.
The news for the Gators has not been particularly great over the last 11 months since I joined the company.
But let's talk about this Rashada case, because you and I knew that this was cooking in the background.
We didn't know if it was ever going to get filed.
Were you surprised that that it did finally come out,
that it dropped and then the Billy Napier gets named?
Yeah, I think, I mean the new conspiracy theory,
which is fun that Kirby Smart took Jaden Rashad just to be able to have this
lawsuit come out against Florida while very fun and very college football.
I think we both know that this lawsuit had been in the works, thought of, you know, constructed from the time from before when Jaden Meaden went to Arizona State.
So this has been a long time coming. And personally, I didn previously saying that you were going to accept any sort of money to go to a school would be an inducement and you would lose your eligibility.
And we've seen that just the landscape of the NCAA change over the last busy with a water pistol, putting out their own fires in the Congress and in courts that they said, listen, we're putting a pause on all of this.
So I think that's probably the reason why we're seeing a lawsuit now.
And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Listening to you and Pete talking, I don't know that many of these cases get to even discovery, let alone a bench or jury trial.
Yeah, my theory is still that the specific reason he includes now Hugh Hathcock is the is the Gators donor.
But the company that Hugh Hathcock ran that he has since sold,
like the fact that that company's in there,
that feels like to me, okay, you're who I want to write the check.
It could be, listen, well, this is the company that funds were going to come from.
So we'll include you.
It could be, well, that company has now changed hands.
We can, I think right now as an attorney, be, well, that company has now changed hands. We can,
I think right now as an attorney, you're looking, what pockets can we collect from? We feel like
we're owed money. Where can we collect from? And if you're looking for something in the $10 million
range, Billy Napier makes a lot of money. He's personally not writing a $10 million check. Um,
who can Hugh Hathcock, uh, reportedly has that kind of money that he can write a check.
Certainly the company,
which reportedly or allegedly some of the money was going to be coming from
can write that kind of check.
And maybe the person or the entity that bought that company doesn't want to
deal with this headache.
And we'd rather write a check,
stroke a check to have it go away, to not put a dark cloud over their
investment, because this has certainly been a dark cloud over Florida for, it feels like a decade
now, but I think it's about 13 months. Well, that's the part that, this is just the thing
that keeps coming up, that keeps biting them in the butt again and and i don't like i don't know about you the more
i read like i was reading through all that yesterday going back to to doing you know all
the stuff on it when it was happening it felt to me especially reading some of those text messages
that this was more of a hugh hathcock versus john Ruiz. So Hugh Hathcock, the Florida donor,
John Ruiz, the Miami donor,
who chimed in yesterday as well.
Like, it...
Let me ask you this.
If he's not committed to Miami,
if Ruiz isn't the person...
Because Ruiz is not as involved in NIL with Miami anymore.
But, like, if he's not committed to Miami
and Ruiz isn't that person handling the situation,
if he was going to Ole Miss or to LSU or anywhere else,
do you think Florida does this
with this massive bidding war to try to get him?
You have to go back and look at just how
almost vindictive John Ruiz was and,
and,
and flying in the face of the NCAA.
I think one of the basketball players committed and in his commitment tweet
was thanks to life wallet.
And it's like,
I think you have to be like on campus.
This seems like an inducement,
but the NCAA wasn't really enforcing anything.
And it was tweeting out what the pay scale was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Congratulations on his $800,000 two-year contract and his new car.
And you're like,
wait,
what?
Florida was losing so many recruits in a high profile way.
And I think that one summer was so unprecedented in just how public these boosters were being inside, mainly just Ruiz, but was being in regards to recruiting.
This is not nothing new.
Boosters being involved in football recruiting is nothing new.
We can ask our friends at our SMU site that it's been going on for a while, just not publicly.
It was all under the table.
And now kind of in the wild, wild not publicly. It was all under the table. And now
kind of in the wild, wild west of NIL, it became very public. And to me, it seemed like
one billionaire to another, hey, I'm tired of losing. Let's win at all costs. What will it
cost? We need a win here because we haven't gotten one in a while. Yeah. And the lawsuit
claims that Rashada had a nine9.5 million deal with Miami.
Ruiz, when I was working at The Athletic and we did the big story on it last year,
Ruiz said it wasn't $9.5 million.
He said again yesterday it was not $9.5 million.
I'm not sure they were competing against a $9.5 million contract.
I think they may have thought they were.
Maybe it was $6 million.
Maybe it was $9.49 andy 9.49 is
not 9.5 it is not but it's it's i that like if discovery were to come out in that because
it is a fraud case it's not breach of contract it's fraud and so i would love to see if there's
a document that he signed with with life wallet like that would be very educational if we could find this
out and and i realized like none of this affects the billy napier part of it because again
the billy napier part of it is him claiming or it's actually uh jade rashada's father harlan
claiming that napier told them that they were going to wire them a million dollars after Rashad assigned.
And that that money never came. There's no text message attached to that.
Nothing. So it is basically one person's account of a conversation.
And then we have not heard from the other person.
And I think it's important that the other person get a chance to say what their side of that was.
Yeah. Filing a lawsuit is not, you don't, the burden,
you have no burden of proof to file a lawsuit.
Your everything we read in the 37 page document is just an accusation from one
party. And,
and the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff if it were to go to trial,
Billy Napier and his attorney could sit there if it were to go to trial and not say a word.
It's completely on the plaintiff, the person bringing the suit to prove their claims.
And at this stage, when you file a lawsuit, you don't have to.
Now, talking to a couple of lawyers on Tuesday, reading through it, they said, I think a judge would allow this to continue on.
But then that then that's when
the burden shifts and the plaintiff has to start providing evidence. That's what discovery is for.
Having dealt with Florida for a decade, this does not seem like a case that they want to go to
discovery. It's a billion dollar entity that runs like a Fortune 500 company. Fortune 500 companies
don't like this kind of headline
and typically stroke checks to make it go away.
It's clear that Jaden Rashada feels like he was promised money
and is owed money.
I've been watching the Denzel Washington clip.
I forget what interview it was, but he says,
I'm going to leave here with something.
I'm from around the way.
I'm leaving here with something.
And I get that.
If someone promised me far less than Jaden,
and I felt like it was owed to me,
I'm leaving here with something.
So I get what Jaden Rashad is trying to do.
I see a lot of people calling it a money grab,
but if somebody promised me $13.85 million,
I'm not going away quietly.
Yeah, we published that contract.
Like, it was incredibly stupid of them to offer him that contract,
but they still did, and he still signed it,
so he thought something was coming.
It's interesting that the only entity,
which is now the defunct Gator Collective,
the only entity that was ever in a legal binding contract
with Jaden Rashad is not mentioned,
which would tell me that that contract was legally voided uh based on and also also the gator collective no longer
exists so you could sue the people but you can't sue the entity because the entity doesn't exist
anymore so yeah that it is it is a very strange situation and yes the other part that's interesting about the contract itself, and if you want to read the contract, we published it at On3 on settle any disputes. Arbitration happens privately.
I'm guessing Rusty Hardin and Jayden Rashada wanted this to happen very publicly.
And so that is why they are not making any claims against the contract itself.
Yeah. Again, when you're in a civil case, the goal is to collect money. You're not changing the world.
You're not solving hunger or peace.
You're trying to collect on a perceived debt.
And publicly going against a company that was sold, a university who is very public,
and the head coach who has enough fire and enough on his plate to deal with just coaching football games.
And then, you know, a now fired former staffer.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
I kind of fully expect this to be settled out of court with some pretty ironclad nondisclosure.
Yeah, I don't think we're ever going to see a dollar figure if the check is written.
Yeah, I don't think we'll know what the check was for.
I don't see this right now costing Billy Napier his job.
Florida is, I guess, the one rumored or reported thing that was in the complaint
is that Billy Napier promised a million dollars.
There's no proof to back that up right now.
If it's a voice recording, Florida is a two-party consent state,
as is California, where the Rashadas live,
which means both parties need to know and agree to the voice,
to the call being recorded.
It's just a rabbit hole.
Sometimes you feel like to cover college football,
you should have gone to law school,
but luckily I was able to get some lawyers on the phone.
Speaking, speaking of rabbit holes, you and I live in the same town and what you just
said, like as reporters, you have to know what's a one party consent state.
What's a two party consent state for recording conversations.
Yeah.
How many times have you been tempted to drive to Georgia to make a phone call?
I haven't.
Only an hour and 15 minutes.
I haven't.
I've been pulled over enough times going five miles an hour over the speed limit in Georgia.
It's not worth it.
I've had a few where I'm like, I should drive to Georgia before I make this phone call.
But usually if you just ask the person, they'll say yes or no.
You can record or you can't.
So it's nice to just be upfront about it.
But let's talk about the Gators in general, because I don't think this case is going to affect them on the field.
But as fate would have it, they do open against Miami in what I'm calling the pitchforks and torches bowl basically each fan base believes like if they
can't beat that team the season's a disaster why bother so whoever loses is going to melt down
let's talk about the gators who i am sensing some optimism from florida people and i i'm
i'm looking at the offensive line specifically and I feel like Brandon
Crenshaw Dixon, the, the, the transfer tackle from San Diego state.
I feel like they feel like he is kind of a key linchpin in making this
offensive line better, which is something they really needed.
Yeah. Damien George struggled mightily at right tackle.
I remember I think it was at South Carolina,
before Graham Mertz's post-game press conference,
saying to him, like, man, you are one tough SOB,
and I wish your offensive line didn't make you show it every week.
He's permanent grass stains on his jersey.
I wonder if they have those out of his jersey before Florida plays
Miami. But I think the offensive line is, they feel like they're too deep pretty much at every
position. You get Austin Barber back. He's healthy. Jake Slaughter, they found something in him.
A guy who had kind of just been around and been a background piece, really stepped up last year
when he needed to when Kingsley Aguacan went down.
So Florida feels good about the offensive line.
I like the addition of Elijah Badger, obviously with Trey Wilson.
The running back room, you're without Trevor Etienne, but they love Jaden Ball.
Montrell Johnson is going to go over 3,000 career rushing yards this year.
And then the defense was a complete overhaul.
I think it's Billy Napier's best roster since he's been here.
It's also the toughest schedule.
And in the sec kicked the scheduling can down the street another year.
So they're just running it back in 2025.
So this schedule that you're looking at right now,
just flip Miami to an away game,
add one at a conference opponent.
And then that's the schedule next year
as well. Yeah. And UCF trades for USF, which like Alice Golish is doing a good job at USF. That's
not going to be an easy game in 25 either. You mentioned the defense and the overhaul.
The loss of Prince William and Miellon to Ole Miss really hurt. But tell me about Justice Boone,
because he's the guy that when I ask people,
that's the name that comes up the most of,
this is a guy you're going to be talking about in the fall.
Yeah, we were ready to talk about him last fall before he got injured
in a fall scrimmage.
So Justice Boone is a talented player.
We haven't really seen him at his best on the field.
I think we were anticipating seeing that in 2023 before the injury.
But he's almost the heart and soul of Florida's defense.
And even when you look at what travel rosters are in the SEC,
and you can only bring a certain number of guys when you go on the road,
they brought Justice Boone on crutches.
That's kind of what he means to the locker room. To bring a player and to
use a roster spot on the road, I think speaks a lot for just how respected Justice Boone is. But
he's going to be coming off the edge for Florida. They feel really good about him.
Florida's kind of deep, like two or three deep at all those positions. I always go back to what
Chris Rumpf told me. He said he learned those defensive linemen have one gas tank.
There's not enough whole milk and orange slices to give them in the locker room
to fill that gas tank up.
And I don't know that Florida has a first-team all-SEC defensive lineman, Andy,
but I think the sum of the parts and being able to only play guys 25, 30 snaps
and keep them fresh should play well for Florida this fall.
Well,
and I think everybody understands that like two years ago,
watching Jervon Dexter play all those snaps at 300 pounds.
If they'd had somebody to,
to give him a breather every once in a while,
he's probably a much more effective player.
I mean,
and that's playing 68 snaps against Utah.
Exactly. Exactly, exactly.
And that's what one thing Florida's had to do.
And then the tackling in the secondary,
it seems like they did bring in some veteran guys through the portal
that they hope will be able to bring some people down
once they get past the second level.
Yeah, I remember talking to Will Harris.
He had just taken the job uh it was early
signing day and he said yeah i'm about to watch uh film uh cut-ups of my secondary on the way back
to california to get my stuff to bring it back here uh and i think he was offering guys on the
plane uh you watch those cut-ups in florida not only didn't tackle well at times it looked like
they had no interest in tackling in the secondary, which is an issue unless you're playing flag football.
So I think what Florida did, they added a bunch of really athletic young players in Jameer Grimsley,
Cormani McClain. You have a class of five defensive backs from the previous year who all
have a ton of experience, but then you added DJ Douglas, former walk-on in Alabama,
transferred to Florida from Tulane.
You get Asa Turner, and you get Traquez Bridges.
That's a lot of starts and some good tackling veterans.
So I think Florida has a good mix of young athletic talent with some older veterans through the transfer portal.
Now, you mentioned Cormani McLean, who we were just talking about,
Jaden Rashada, and Cormani was another member of that class in 2023 that Florida and Miami duked it out over.
He kind of ended up playing both of them and then went to Colorado and it didn't work out at Colorado.
You know, Dion was was very critical of him during last season.
Then he ends up leaving Colorado this offseason.
So how did
Cormani McLean wind up in Gainesville? Yeah, it's kind of been a back-to-back roller coasters this
week, uh, old roller coasters that were riding with those two. I think Cormani McLean, everyone
wanted him the allure of playing, being a defensive back like Cormani McLean and playing for, in my
opinion, probably the best defensive back to ever play football.
And Deion Sanders ultimately won out over Miami and over Florida.
He's a kid who is very close to his mom.
He's from Orlando.
And I think when you get out to Colorado,
they don't really have a culture.
Deion's a first time division one head coach.
They're building a culture.
You get out there and there's not really direction.
You're far away from home.
All of a sudden there's this like really really direction. You're far away from home.
All of a sudden there's this like really cold white stuff falling from the sky in November.
You're like,
what is this?
It was falling in the spring game last year.
No,
thank you.
No,
no,
no,
thank you.
I think it's a culture shock.
And then I think when you decide to leave that market,
everyone wanted you when you were a senior in high school,
when you were a junior in high school, everyone wanted you. And I think when you get into that market and Everyone wanted you when you were a senior in high school. When you were
a junior in high school, everyone wanted you. And I think when you get into that market and all of
a sudden the phone's not ringing the same way, the coaches aren't talking to you the same way,
I think it's a little humbling. And he's going to walk on at Florida. Now, listen, we say that,
and it is true, there will be a scholarship waiting for him in December when there's a
little more roster flexibility than there is right now. But I think it's a humbling experience. In Florida, we're not
talking about a kid who's getting in trouble with police or getting arrested or anything like that,
maybe just some immaturity. Florida feels like they've, in the three years, built a culture and
a structure inside their program that, as my colleague Zach Albaverde wrote, can probably help
Cormani more than Cormani can help them. And I don't know that he'll be thrown into being a
starter right away. You have Jason Marshall and Devin Moore when he's healthy, starting at
cornerback. So I think Cormani is, in Florida's mind, a low-risk, high-reward play. You get a
former five-star who could be a potential draft pick down the road at little risk to you.
Right.
And that's the thing.
I think we have this notion that if you're a five-star and you're not immediately impactful, well, you're a bust.
He's got three more years of eligibility.
And then four if he were to redshirt this year so like there's a chance that
he could still turn into a very productive college football player that because he has the the
physical tools it's just a matter of putting it all together but i find i just found it so
interesting that they came back around on him because apart from ashada he felt like kind of
emblematic of how that era of Florida recruiting
went, where it was like, we're going to go after these big fish, but we're not quite sure what
we're doing here. It feels like they've buttoned some of that up. Ezra in the chat talking about
Rashada, he had a contract that allowed both parties to back out at any time. Dumb lawsuit,
if you ask me, we didn't ask you Ezra. But it's probably a dumb lawsuit.
You're right.
But that's why they sued for fraud
and didn't go after anything in the contract.
Briley says, Florida season and Napier's job
probably both ride on game one against Miami.
Gators got to find a way to six wins
and hard to see much of a path without a win against,
oh, he called them the candy canes.
Oh, boy.
Oh, that's his fighting
words Riley Nick I don't think Billy Napier's job rides on the result of the Miami game but I do
think I don't know about you I think if Florida's not four and one after the first five the path to
seven and five or or a result that feels like you're confident going forward.
I think the path is very narrow if you're not four in one of those first five games.
Yeah, I might start calling week one the Hope Bowl.
Both coaches hired the same offseason or under 500.
They're selling hope to their fan bases.
And this is a former yearly rivalry.
As you can see from the comments calling the candy canes, Miami fans have a certain way of spelling Gators that we don't need to say on
the show.
There's no love loss between the fan bases.
Good luck selling hope.
If you're Billy Napier or Mario crystal ball to your fan base,
losing this game.
And yes, Florida-Miami will play next year,
but who knows when they will play after that.
It's not like Florida-Florida State where every year, every 365,
you get a chance to get those bragging rights.
You don't know when you will get the chance to get those bragging rights.
And Billy Napier doesn't have the excuse that Mario will have of,
well, we had to go on the road and it was a hostile environment.
We had a bunch of transfers playing their first game for us. So there's almost a built-in excuse. Not that I don't know many Canes fans will want to hear it, but it builds an excuse
for Miami being on the road that Billy Napier doesn't have playing that game at home. Looking
at Florida's schedule, beat Miami, beat Sanford. You have back-to-back first-year head coaches after that,
first-year programs. And then UCF, I think UCF is a tougher game than people are giving it credit
for. KJ Jefferson, who is, I think, the actual quarterback that Gus Malzahn will make in EA
College Football 25 this summer to run his offense. And then you have to go to Tennessee,
and Florida's 2-10 away from the swamp under Billy Napier.
They have shown and given me no confidence that they can pick up their show,
take it on the road and run the same act.
So you look at that schedule.
I, like I said, last year with last year's schedule, Andy,
catch wins early because you might catch hands late starting in November.
I mean, that's a, it's just a brutal November.
Those five games from Georgia through Florida state. I agree with you.
I think you have to be, I would say five and five and one,
six and one heading into Georgia,
six and one heading into Georgia.
It probably requires beating Kentucky, which has yet to do. I, yeah,
there there's a, there's a significant hill to climb right here and we'll
see but i think you're right about the hope and you know the florida miami thing because they're
not playing every year because this is such a rare occurrence like at least the winning fan base is
going to be humble and uh we'll handle it with grace and dignity in class, I'm sure. Probably they'll teach classes on how to handle wins humbly.
Nick, I promise the next time I have you on,
it'll be about something good.
Okay, thank you, Andy.
Thanks, Nick.
Nick Delatore from Gators Online.
We know him.
We love him.
He is the best.
And yes, I keep bringing him on to talk about bad things,
and I got to stop doing that.
I have got to bring Nick on.
The next time something remotely positive happens to Florida,
we're bringing Nick on even for like two minutes.
We got to do that.
I don't want people to think I'm overly negative
because I'm trying to not be a homer toward my alma mater
or something like that.
It's just been a lot of negative.
And a lot of it's kind of juicy.
Like, again, how often do you have a former recruit suing the head coach?
It doesn't happen that often.
But I digress.
Tomorrow's a Thursday.
You know what that means.
It's a Dear Andy show.
Hit me up.
Social media, Andy underscore Staples.
Twitter or Instagram.
Or you can email your questions to andystapleson3 at gmail.com.
That's andystapleson3 at gmail.com.
So, fire me some questions.
Because I do want your questions.
We are also going to add in some questions.
I did an ask me anything with the college football subreddit at Reddit, and it was a lot of fun.
I did that on Tuesday.
You can go read it if you want on Reddit.
But the questions were fantastic.
So we're going to ask a couple of those, and I'll expand on my answers from the AMA.
They were really insightful. That's
a group I love. If you're not on Reddit, you might want to join that college football subreddit.
It's just a fun group, really smart, passionate fans, and their discussions are great.
One question I'll throw. It was a very insightful college football question followed by,
what's the largest mammal
you could knock out with one punch. We'll see if I can answer that one tomorrow. We'll talk to you
tomorrow.