Marcus Lattimore shares lengths an SEC team went to recruit Byrnes High players pre 'legal' NIL era
The newest episode to the podcast series “BLEAV in South Carolina” with me, Marcus Lattimore, and Nick Klos on the BLEAV Network is live.
On this week’s episode we dig into NIL (name, image, and likeness) in college athletics and where it’s taking the sport of college football when it comes to recruiting.
“Coaches are gonna do what they have to do when the stakes are that high,” said Lattimore. “You can say that they have lack of personal integrity, they’re not playing by the rules – yeah, that’s college football, people. It’s reality. It’s not fantasy. People have expectations. You want want to win football games, the coaches want to win football games and once that happens sometimes decency, dignity, and integrity goes out the door. Do I agree with it? No. Is it reality? It is.”
According to the On3 NIL Valuation, South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler, Dakereon Joyner, and Luke Doty are all valued north of $50,000. Rattler currently ranks tenth in the country with an NIL Valuation of $1.2 million.
That got Lattimore thinking about what his NIL Valuation would’ve been following his 2010 SEC Freshman of the Year season, which he also earned First Team All-SEC running back honors. A once highly recruited five-star coming out of Byrnes High School, Lattimore couldn’t help but just smile and shake his head knowing the tactics he witnessed well before players were allowed to receive money through ‘legal’ NIL deals.
“The things that I’ve seen. Everything goes in the world of recruiting… I won’t say where, I won’t say when, I won’t say how, but I’ve seen in a hotel room $75,000 in cash laying on a bed, spread out on the bed. I’ve seen keys handed.”
But perhaps one of the crazier stories involving Lattimore is the lengths Tennessee went to recruit him and some of his Byrnes High School teammates.
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“It’s public knowledge about the chicks from Tennessee. They came down to our high school game. That’s in a book… I don’t even know how it got published but it’s in a book… Tennessee sent some people down for one of our playoff games. None of us knew that they were coming. There were three very beautiful women who showed up at our game. One of my best friends ended up committing to Tennessee after that night. So I mean, it worked. You know, I think two of my teammates committed to Tennessee after that night. They came to the game, they came out down to the field and had on their orange.”
While Lattimore opted not to enjoy a night out with the ladies from Knoxville that evening, he says this is one of the many ways well before the NCAA adopted an interim name, image and likeness policy last June, of how schools have went about recruiting for years.
“Anything you want, anything you need, they’ll get you there. There’s so many things that happen behind closed doors that people in the world of recruiting. We’re joking about it but it’s really not the right thing to do. Simply because the mind is so young at that age. You don’t really know what’s going on. You like pleasure and more pleasure. Now you’ve got this idea that this is how life is going to be.”
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