Gene Therapy: Against The Grain

by Gene Clemons

With a stroke of a pen, the college recruiting landscape was flipped on its head during the early signing period. Consensus number one overall player Travis Hunter decided to take his talents to…….Jackson Mississippi? That’s right! The 6’1” 160-pound cornerback shunned the advances of Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, and every other major Power Five player in college football. On signing day, the Collins Hill High School product turned his back on his long time commitment to Florida State and at his ceremony flung the FSU hat off the table, caught the Jackson State “J” hat flying at him from off stage and revealed the “I believe” tee that he was wearing underneath his jacket. 

It was a banner day for Hunter who stole the entire day. It was another step for Coach Prime to show that what they were doing in the spring was not a fluke but in fact a new normal and a warning to the establishment that they and subsequently other HBCU programs would have to be respected as a legit factor in recruiting. It was celebrated by countless people who considered it a win for all HBCU’s and a win for the culture. But any time you upset the “natural order” the ugly never takes long to appear. The negative shots always start subtle and then crescendos to blatant full-fledged disrespect. 

The first slight came when ESPN announced him as the second ranked player in the country. It's not that various scouting services are always aligned but when the news announces something it is usually based on the consensus. Whether it was done purposefully to lessen the magnitude of the moment or not, we will never know but it was not lost on people who followed the timeline of the announcement. 

The second came with backlash from Florida State fans who declared Deion Sanders public enemy number one and denounced him as a true Seminole. "How could he do this to us?" Was a familiar phrase posted among the social media posts. The Twitter space titled "Fire Mike Norvell" flooded with people who believed there must be something wrong with the 'Noles coach if he is losing recruits to an HBCU.

The disrespect continued to go deeper. The rumors that a significant corporate involvement by Barstool Sports in conjunction with Coach Prime funded an NIL deal that lured Hunter away from FSU or the other P5 suitors and delivered him to Jackson State. People commenting that Hunter will be in the transfer portal next season and that Coach Prime bought Hunter permeated throughout social media and on mainstream media debate platforms. It reached a climax when radio personality and former college basketball player Doug Gottlieb compared choosing a top FCS HBCU over a P5 school to choosing a Jewish D3 school over a P5. He also said that the decision was an obvious mistake. 

The question becomes why? Why is it a mistake? Let’s examine some reasons people lay out and debunk these baseless premises. 

There’s more exposure at a P5. False

This is usually the first point that the uninformed make. Exposure is relative to talent. Many of these top talents don’t need a college to provide exposure anymore. They do it themselves. Many of the top recruits in college athletics have thousands upon thousands of followers. It could be argued that they help the needle move at the school they attend. This is a dilapidated way of thinking that predates the social exposure world we live in now. In this particular case, no school, including the P5 best teams, received more exposure than Jackson State since the arrival of Coach Prime. 

You have a chance to play in front of large crowds full of adoring fans. True but…

Have you ever been in a packed stadium of 50,000 and a packed stadium of 90,000? Both create a seemingly deafening sound. Both are electric. But the opportunity to play in front of a packed stadium full of faces that don’t look like you will never trump the feeling of a packed stadium full of people who look like your mother and father or could be a cousin. Do the fans at Florida State love you, or do they love what you can do for their team. The fans at an HBCU rock with you and want to see you succeed because they feel like when you succeed, they succeed. That feeling can not be usurped by a few thousand more people in the stands. 

The education is better. False

This is one of the most infuriating lies that many of these schools tell. Very similar to the lies that private schools tell players in high school, the idea that your education is better because it might cost more money is preposterous. HBCU’s have been recruiting and producing some of the best and brightest in all fields for many decades. They have done that for many years while being denied the same federal and state funding as their PWI contemporaries. It has long been preached that when you are black you have to work twice as hard to make the same mark in the world so HBCU’s prepare their students for the rigors of being black in a world that is already difficult. When they emerge, they are usually well versed in their field and ready to conquer the world. Which is why there are so many alumni doing well for themselves. 

The coaching is better. False

We have all heard the saying, “It’s not the X’s and O’s, it’s the Jimmys and Joes.” We make coaching important whenever we want to make the argument but in college normally it comes down to who can recruit better. It is no coincidence that when PWI’s were not accepting black players, HBCUs fielded mighty teams. Segregation saw these same school pilfer talent like a midnight raid at an auction house. They left HBCU’s to fight for talent that used to routinely populate their rosters. The coaching did not improve, the players did. But for the sake of argument in this case Hunter is a defensive back. He gets an opportunity to be mentored and taught by the greatest defensive back of all time who happens to be a meticulous student of the game and tireless worker. No other school on the planet can offer him that level of coaching. 

Why would these P5 schools spend millions of dollars just on recruiting budgets every year if they were not setting up the opportunity to make that money back 100-fold? The recruiting budgets of programs like Alabama and Georgia hover around three million per year but the amount of money they generate is in the 100 million range. Their care for the player is based on the ability to continue to generate that type of money. How disastrous would it be for the P5 if all of these top recruits decided to follow Hunter to HBCU’s? The endorsement dollars and television rights deals follow the talent so don’t expect these schools to take this move by Jackson State lightly. They will hit back. They have already planned their smear campaign if things don’t work out. They will conveniently forget what just happened at Ohio State where a quarterback went to the school to get his million dollar NIL deal and the next season he was in the transfer portal. They will forget BYU brokering a deal to pay the tuition of all of their walk-ons essentially giving the team unlimited scholarships. They will overlook the NIL deal that Texas brokered for ever offensive linemen who attended the school in Austin. 

The truth is they have no choice but to fight. They can’t afford to lose these assets, they can’t imagine life where they actually need to develop players and be patient with the process of building a team when you can’t infuse it with the best players in the country year after year. Congratulations to Travis Hunter for going against the grain. You can believe he will not be the last one.

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Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.