re: Kelly says things not going well on defensive line recruiting

quote:

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Paying Walter Nolen makes sense.
Paying Damonic Williams more than Nolen is just silly. That’s the problem with schools who don’t know how to play the portal game.

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This is what people need to understand about what he's referring to "buying" players.

We are not going to upset 80 other players currently on the team because we went out and promised a good but nothing special DT like Williams $1.5M for 1 year in NIL. It's just bad culture precedent at that point.

I hope people arent actually naive enough to think the players dont talk constantly about what NIL they are getting and how they are getting it. It's 1 thing to earn what you get, like a Jayden Daniels or Malik Nabers, it's another to say I wont even come there unless I'm promised the moon with frankly not even proving you're worth near that with a guy like Damonic Williams.

As far as the DL goes, we got the rotational guy from Wisconsin Paez, we will still go out and get another 1 or 2 in the portal in the end. There's still some players out there, for example Adin Huntington from ULM. A player like Williams is not worth what he was asking especially if it can easily cause culture issues in the program itself accepting a guy like that with what he's demanding.