MIAMI, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 02: Deion Sanders of the NLF 100 All-Time Team is honored on the field prior to Super Bowl LIV between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs at Hard Rock Stadium on February 02, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Coach Deion Sanders did something unheard of.
He got who someone to call the top recruit in the nation, cornerback Travis Hunter, to decommit from Florida State in favor of an HBCU, Jackson State. Hunter is the first five-star recruit to choose an FCS team since ESPN began their rankings in 2006.
“Historically Black Colleges and Universities have a rich history in football,” Hunter said in a statement. “I want to be part of that history, and more, I want to be part of that future. I am making this decision so that I can light the way for others to follow, make it a little easier for the next player to recognize that HBCUs may be everything you want and more.”
Hunter is from Suwanee, Georgia, and attends Collins Hill High School. He had been committed to Florida State since March 2020.
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This also begins the conversation of the impact of the NIL. Hunter is a trailblazer and will no doubt prove to others that there are other options than the college football powerhouses, but he also benefits from it.
“It isn’t always about signing with a name-brand school, or being another star (or even the highest-rated star) on a star-studded roster,” Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports wrote. “It’s about being the biggest deal on a presumed (but perhaps more profitable) smaller stage by offering entree for businesses to a specific community and getting fan bases to pay for something that they otherwise couldn’t get.”
There’s not much Coach Prime hasn’t done. He played in the NFL and MLB at the same time. He’s an NFL Hall of Famer. He’s the head coach at Jackson State, who he, in this first year, lead to an 11-1 record. And now, he’s a recruiting prowess, flipping Hunter from his own alma mater to the team he now coaches. Sanders brought in his son, Shedeur Sanders, who before Hunter was the program’s highest-ranked commit, to be the quarterback. Last year, Sanders signed six players who had offers from Power Five programs at a school that rarely get a three-star recruit.
“We’re going to shock the country,” Sanders said on Tuesday, the day before the early signing period, on the Unnecessary Roughness podcast.
He was right.
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