A million-dollar spread of NIL deals spurred Quinn Ewers to Ohio State early, but staying never made sense

Four months isn’t a long time. But that won’t stop Quinn Ewers’ four months in Columbus from being an overarching storyline of the 2025 Cotton Bowl, which will pit No. 8-seed Ohio State against (5) Texas in the semifinals of the College Football Playoffs.

Ewers, if you aren’t aware by now, reclassified from the 2022 class to the 2021 class in August of 2021 to enroll at Ohio State.

He had an uneventful few months on the field, but, in many ways, became a transformational trendsetter in the NIL space with the move. Ahead of the Cotton Bowl, let’s revisit Ewers’ time in Columbus and what led to that brief marriage in the first place.

A massive flip

Ewers was a foundational recruiting win for Tom Herman’s Texas staff when he committed on Aug. 14, 2020. Ewers ranked as the No. 1 player in the country in the 2022 class, committing to the school he grew up rooting for. Ewers might as well have been a mulleted savior in the minds of many Longhorn fans. 

But that commitment lasted only a few months as Ewers decommitted from Texas on Oct. 28 on the heels of an underwhelming 3-2 start by the Longhorns, which put Herman squarely on the hot seat.

Ewers committed to Ohio State a few weeks later, a pledge that stuck for almost a year despite aggressive pushes from teams all over the country, including eventual Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian; Texas fired Herman following the 2020 season. 

An NIL-motivated reclassification 

What if I told you Kombucha is the reason the No. 1 player in the country skipped his senior season of high school football?

If there’s ever a “30 for 30” on the NIL era, that could easily be the opener, because Ewers’ reclassification from the 2022 to 2021 class was the first real bombshell of the NIL…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/a-million-dollar-spread-of-nil-deals-spurred-quinn-ewers-to-ohio-state-early-but-staying-never-made-sense/

Author : Chris Hummer

Publish date : 2025-01-08 16:15:00

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