How Opportunity — Both NIL and Football — Helped Dasan McCullough Transfer from Indiana to Oklahoma

By THOMAS BREW

HoosiersNow.com

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — NIL is drastically altering the panorama of faculty soccer, widening the hole between the haves and have nots, with a sprinkling of subsets in between. The high-stakes recruiting world has been flipped on its head.

For Indiana, a soccer program that has misplaced extra video games than anybody and hasn’t gained a Large Ten Convention championship in 55 years, attempting to compete on this new world is a large problem. It is at all times been troublesome — some would say unattainable — to win recruiting battles for high-end expertise with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and the others.

That we already know, and have identified for many years now.

The Hoosiers have had two consecutive years of their best-ever recruiting courses, benefiting from 8-4 and 6-1 common seasons in 2019 and 2020 underneath effervescent coach Tom Allen. That they had the Thirtieth-ranked recruiting class in 2022 — and, sure, the truth that that is the best rating at school historical past says so much about the issue — with the prized piece of that class being Dasan McCullough, a 6-foot-5 edge rusher with a telling soccer pedigree and an NFL future.

Indiana needed to recruit him a number of instances, first in highschool in Kansas after which in Bloomington when his household moved right here. His father, Deland McCullough, introduced the household to Indiana after leaving the Tremendous Bowl-champion Kansas Metropolis Chiefs to hitch Allen’s employees as a operating backs coach. Dasan, who was dedicated to Ohio State on the time, flipped to Indiana.

His older brother — Deland II — transferred from Miami of Ohio, and his youthful brother Daeh dedicated to Indiana, too. It was a terrific household story, the entire McCulloughs collectively at Indiana.

Allen and his employees needed to re-recruit him a number of instances, together with after his father moved north to Notre Dame for a greater job after only one yr at Indiana. They did it once more after his youthful brother de-committed and once more after two years of nice Indiana soccer was a brutal 2-10 season in 2021.

McCullough, a four-star recruit with the best rating at school historical past, got here anyway.

He had a terrific freshman yr regardless of the Hoosiers going 4-8, making some freshman All-American lists. And so, on this new NIL world, after the season was over, Indiana wanted to recruit him yet again.

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