Fran Brown addresses Trebor Pena transfer decision: 'I'm not giving no wide receiver $2 million in college'

After Trebor Pena opted to leave Syracuse and enter the transfer portal, Orange coach Fran Brown said NIL was a part of the decision. Speaking on WTLA-AM radio, Brown said Pena asked for a bigger deal before hitting the portal.

Pena officially entered the transfer portal as a graduate transfer on Tuesday, one day before the spring window officially opened. He is coming off the best year of his career at Syracuse, hauling in 84 receptions for 941 yards and nine touchdowns as a fifth-year senior.

As he assessed the current landscape, Brown pointed out other big numbers he heard from programs. While he noted NIL wasn’t the central reason behind Pena’s decision to transfer, some big things would have to happen for him to follow through on one of those offers.

“It didn’t play into it at all,” Brown said. “But sometimes, people be asking for an outrageous number. … Stop. With all due respect to everybody in the country, to every wide receiver, to everybody doing all this stuff – if you’re going to make $2 million at wide receiver, that’s the homie at Ohio State [Jeremiah Smith]. Ain’t nobody else making that money. I ain’t giving no wide receiver $2 million in college, man.

“That ain’t me. I ain’t doing that. Unless somebody tells me that we have the chance to have Travis Hunter, he can come here and play for us, then he’ll get some of my check. I ain’t paying anybody $2 million. We ain’t giving nobody that.”

While Brown reiterated NIL wasn’t the main factor behind Trebor Pena’s transfer, he acknowledged there were “numbers” he didn’t feel comfortable offering. Ultimately, after thinking about it, he decided they had to part ways.

“First of all, I love the kid. Trebor’s my guy,” Brown said of Pena. “I recruited him, he came and played for me at Temple. Then, he got here. That was, what, six years ago? Then, I got here, and Trebor hadn’t played. I think he had 20 catches before we got here in four years. And there were somethings I had to help Trebor with, that we helped him with as a staff, and then he got better and had a really good year last year. Did an amazing job. As all the guys left, there’s a lot of pressure, I’ll say, in the world. Everybody don’t always handle everything accordingly that I would maybe handle it or you may handle it.

“But what I’ll tell you is this, we paid him enough. He was going to be paid more. There were different things that would go there. But there were some numbers that were asked of me that I didn’t feel I would be able to do and move on. Of course, I treat him right, I took care of him. Done everything that was needed. I just said, yo, you got to go. … I prayed on it and I kept going through things, and it was like, why would I try to convince somebody to be somewhere when I know the offense works? Because at Baylor, there was a lot of success with these receivers that all went to the NFL. There was success at other places. I was just like, now I have to tell him he needs to go.”