The Jaden Rashada lawsuit situation won’t ultimately cost Florida head coach Billy Napier his job, so says GatorsOnline’s Nick De La Torre.
Rashada was a four-star prospect in the 2023 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Ranking. On June 26, 2022, Rashada committed to Miami. However, on November 10, 2022, Rashada signed a contract with The Gator Collective, which promised as much as $13.85 million to highly-touted recruit over four years.
Once the Gator Collective pulled the deal, Florida also released Rashada from his National Letter of Intent.
“Again, when you’re in a civil case, the goal is to collect money,” De La Torre said on Andy Staples On3. “You’re not changing the world, you’re not solving hunger or peace, you’re trying to collect on perceived debt. And publicly going against a company, a university who was very public and the head coach who has enough fire and enough on his plate to deal with just coaching football games and, 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 non-disclosure so, I don’t think we’ll know what the check was for. I don’t see this right now costing Billy Napier his job. 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 Rashada’s live, which means both parties need to know and agree to the voice to the call being recorded. It’s just a rabbit hole.”
Following the departure from Florida, Rashada then committed to Arizona State, where he only made three appearances in the 2023 campaign due to injury. Rashada entered the transfer portal after the season and committed to Georgia on April 25.
Now, Rashada is claiming he was repeatedly lied to for him to flip his commitment from Miami to Florida. Some say this whole situation could put Napier’s job in jeopardy, rather than the on-field results.
“The Billy Napier part of it is … Jaden Rashada’s father Harlan claiming that Napier told them that they were going to wire them a million dollars after Rashada signed and that that money never came,” Staples said. “There’s no text message attached to that, nothing. So it is basically one person’s account of a conversation and that 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.”
Rashada is suing on counts of fraudulent misrepresentation, fraudulent inducement, aiding and abetting fraud, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, negligent misrepresentations, tortious interference, aiding and abetting tortious interference and vicarious liability. The complaint is an unprecedented look into high-level NIL negotiations in college football.
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