Jaden Rashada aims to ensure football career isn’t defined by NIL as NCAA continues regulation battle

TEMPE, Ariz. — The $13 Million Quarterback tried to blend in Saturday. No problem there. Even Jaden Rashada agreed he didn’t nearly live up to the hype during Arizona State’s spring game.

“I didn’t do too well today,” the Sun Devils’ quarterback told CBS Sports after being sacked several times and throwing an interception.

Rashada’s game is not the entire story, though. There was an ancillary reason he was surrounded by autograph seekers after the scrimmage. Like it or not, Rashada might as well be the face of name, image and likeness now 22 months into its existence.

Those aforementioned eight figures was reportedly the offer Rashada received by a now-defunct Florida collective for his NIL services. It remains the largest rumored offer connected to a high school football prospect in the NIL era. Heck, likely for any prospect in any college sport in any era.

That NIL deal — of whatever actual value — famously, publicly and embarrassingly broke down. Rashada — a valued four-star prospect from California — was ultimately released from his Florida scholarship and signed with Arizona State.

“I never thought I could handle something like that,” Rashada said. “You go through it. It’s part of it. It’s part of life. You can’t really control what’s in front of you.”

A comfortable landing spot was also a familiar one. Arizona State, long a mediocre Pac-12 program, is the alma mater of Jaden’s father Harlan, who played defensive back for the Sun Devils from 1992-94.

“I feel incredibly bad for the fact — thank God his dad played football at Arizona State, so he had a place to go,” NCAA president Charlie Baker told CBS Sports. “I really hope that kid has an amazing college career, and at some point, has the ability to get the kind of [NIL] agreement his ability as a student athlete would entitle him to.”

Now, the challenge becomes ensuring Rashada’s game on the field, not his NIL experience, is the first sentence on his Wikipedia page.

“That’s a great example of what the so-called ‘Wild West’ looks like and what happened — what can happen,” Baker said.

What can happen continues to be fought out on the recruiting trail, football fields, courtrooms and even Capitol Hill. What is happening is what NIL has become almost two years months into its implementation by the NCAA: the ultimate argument over whether compensation liberates the athlete or pollutes the…