Should David Portnoy's "Recruitment" of Bryce Underwood Be Considered Tampering?
- kdgentry743
- Dec 3, 2024
- 2 min read

It's no secret that Dave Portnoy is a big supporter of Michigan football, so much so that the founder of barstool sports openly said he would spend $1 to $3 million dollars a year of his own money to help land a quarterback in this upcoming recruiting cycle. The quarterback that was targeted was Bryce Underwood. Underwood had been committed to Brian Kelly and the LSU tigers for almost 3 years before rumors started to swirl he was looking elsewhere. One can hardly blame him as Bayou Brian seemed to lose control of his team a few weeks ago showing the chartreuse red face that was often seen storming up and down the Notre Dame sidelines for many years. I guess my issue stems from the fact that outside of being a Michigan fan and alum why is Dave Portnoy able to reach out to an 18 year old kid to pitch his favorite collegiate team. Did he check with Sherrone Moore before he reached out, you know the actual head coach and leader of the program and ask if there was any interest in making this happen? I am sure Sherrone isn't complaining especially since Michigan's quarterback play has been down right abysmal this year, but a lot more goes into recruiting than just paying for players. Is this player a good culture fit, is he a good fit in our offensive system, and would we lose a player already committed to the program? Not only did Portnoy put up money but he was approached by another Michigan alum a woman named Jolin, whose husband is a billionaire named Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison didn't even go to Michigan he was an Illinois alum who just so happened to marry a Michigan alum who is so upset about how this season went after a national championship that she got on a zoom call with Portnoy and offered up her husbands money to get a deal done. Then after that call Portnoy and Jolin zoomed with Bryce Underwood and offered him a deal worth 10.5 million dollars presumably without anyone from Michigan even being involved. This going forward is setting a dangerous precedent, that anyone outside of the actual program can contact a 17 or 18 year old kid and his parents and say here is a big bag of money commit to this program and we will contact the coach and the admissions dept and everyone else after the fact to get a deal done. To me this is 100 percent tampering. Brian Kelly and LSU did everything the right way, they built a relationship with this kid, got him on campus numerous times, probably pitched him the idea of being a Heisman trophy winner like they did with Jaden Daniels, and landed a commitment for 3 years only to have it stolen from the owner of Barstool because they offered an 18 year old kid over 10 million dollars. I am ok with them paying the kids I think it has created more parity in college football than ever before, but there needs to be a rule in place that only people in the program can broker deals with the athletes and there needs a cap put on how much each team can spend per position every year.
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