Pete Thamel reveals where things went 'sideways' with Jaden Rashada, Florida

The ongoing situation at Florida involving highly rated recruit Jaden Rashada came to a head this week when he requested his release from his National Letter of Intent, as On3’s Pete Nakos reported. A massive NIL deal was at the center of it all, and ESPN’s Pete Thamel provided more context on it all.

Rashada reportedly agreed to an NIL deal with the Gator Collective upward of $13 million, and it fell through. That led to his decision to request his release from his NLI this week, and it’s unclear how the two sides — Rashada and the Gator Collective — will disengage from their agreement, Thamel said.

He added an apparent communication breakdown is at the center of it all.

“The Name, Image and Likeness contract, I don’t know how they disengage from that,” Thamel said on The Paul Finebaum Show Wednesday. “I was told … it was essentially a miscommunication where an agent was dealing with a representative of the firm and they thought they had that kind of money and they thought there was someone, be it be a booster or whoever, to put it up and it simply wasn’t there and didn’t exist. When the family got a sense of that, they decided to leave.”

How NIL laws played a role in the Jaden Rashada decision at Florida

NIL laws are also an important part of the equation. In Rashada’s home state of California — and in many other states — high school student-athletes can sign NIL deals. That’s not the case in Florida, and Thamel said that can have an impact on agreements at the collegiate level.

That said, Thamel said the relationship between Florida and the Gator Collective could change drastically as a result.

“In the case of Florida, Paul, one interesting nuance is that because there is not Name, Image and Likeness in high schools like there is in California, they haven’t really dealt with these situations with recruits,” Thamel said. “Now, I was told that it’s very likely that Florida ends up distancing itself from the Gator Collective, and that’s happened at a bunch of schools where an initial collective pops up, it’s not working, the leadership isn’t in sync and they sort of move on, they mutate, they change. That’s part of the frontier nature of where we are in NIL.

“But the Gator Collective did more than 100 deals for current Florida student-athletes and they all kind of went OK and accordingly. This one was different because it was with a recruit. The recruit was from California where Name, Image and Likeness deals are OK, and I think that’s where things might have gone sideways a little bit here, Paul.”

ESPN’s Pete Thamel: Rashada’s de-commitment ‘a symptom of the new era that we’re in’

Much has been made over the last year-plus of NIL about the guidelines the NCAA has in place and the enforcement. NIL Collectives are third-party organizations that help facilitate deals for athletes, and they’re independent of the university. Thamel also said athletes have complained to coaches about deals not coming through as promised, and that’s been an issue across college football.

Now, it’s having an impact on recruiting, and Thamel said there’s likely to be a “ripple effect” from the Rashada decision as a result.

“I think it’s sort of a symptom of the new era that we’re in where they sort of allowed all these things to happen and didn’t make any rules surrounding them,” Thamel said. “Look, there’s an inherent danger when, essentially your payroll, is designated to third parties that you don’t have any control of and, really, aren’t supposed to engage with in a significant way about these deals. It’s an interesting situation at Florida with the Gator Collective. Simply put, they signed a contract and wrote a check they couldn’t cash. And it’s a big check. There’s a reason that they couldn’t cash it.

“It speaks to something I think, Paul, that’s happening on a lot of these campuses. There were numerous instances this year of players going to their coaches upset because the collectives weren’t coming through on the money that was owed to the players. This is really the first high-profile recruiting example of this, which caused a significant de-commitment that’s going to cause a huge ripple across the country as Jaden Rashada tries to wriggle his way out of his National Letter of Intent and decides where to go next. But I really do think the clunky nature of the system and the non-linear nature of the process lends itself a little bit to these types of things happening.”