Sterling Sanders could feel the tears coming on.

It was late October and Sanders was elated. He’d just committed to Boston College inside coach Bill O’Brien’s office. A handshake sealed the deal.

The three-star defensive lineman from Blytheville, S.C., had always dreamed of playing at the Power 4 level but wasn’t sure whether the opportunity would ever come. That changed when Boston College became his first — and only — P4 offer in early October. And the offer was too good to pass up.

There were tears of joy.

“I couldn’t believe I was going to make it this far,” Sanders said.

There was one problem: He had been committed to Georgia Southern since June. He developed a close relationship with coach Clay Helton and the entire Eagles staff, particularly “Miss Lex,” as Sanders called director of on-campus recruiting Lex Villarreal. She, as much as anyone, had comforted him through the death of a high school teammate.

Now he had to tell her and the rest of the coaching staff that he’d just committed to another school.

“I really loved Georgia Southern. Georgia Southern did everything for me,” Sanders said. “It was very hard to flip.

“I was like, ‘OK, let me make this big decision. I have to put my big boy pants on.’”

Sanders called his position coach to break the news but got voicemail, so he texted rather than leave a message. He texted Villarreal, as well, and was relieved when Georgia Southern staffers wished him well and told him they understood his decision.

But flipping was still hard on him, as it is for many prospects who have a change of heart and end up going back on their word — often after being committed to their former school for several months.

And it only gets more difficult — for both prospects and programs — the closer a flip occurs to the early signing period, which begins Wednesday.

“It’s so interesting because when you flip a kid, it’s super exciting. But when you lose a kid, it’s devastating,” said a Big Ten recruiting staffer who was granted anonymity in exchange for candor. “You build that relationship and you know their birthdays and you know what’s going on in their life — (if) they have prom coming up or homecoming or whatever it may be, and ‘Oh, he took his girlfriend out on a date’ or ‘It’s his girlfriend’s birthday.’

“You invest so much time that when they flip, it’s almost like a breakup. It’s so disheartening.”

According to the 247Sports database, there have been 504 decommitments and counting in the 2025 cycle.

In the past seven days, there have been 35 flips. Three of the nation’s top six quarterbacks switched their commitment during a five-day span last month — Bryce Underwood (LSU to Michigan), Husan Longstreet (Texas A&M to USC) and Julian Lewis (USC to Colorado).

Oftentimes a school knows when a flip is inevitable.

Four-star linebacker Dawson Merritt said Alabama coaches had an idea of what might be coming after online recruiting services started forecasting him to Nebraska. He proved them right when he flipped to the Cornhuskers on Nov. 14.

“I wouldn’t say they were anticipating it,” Merritt said of the Alabama staff. “But they weren’t shocked or anything.”

The first hint a prospect might be wavering, the Big Ten staffer said, is when he starts to visit other programs despite already being committed elsewhere. Sometimes prospects will downplay the seriousness of those visits, but part of the job in any recruiting department is to become an expert at reading the signs.

Sterling Sanders jumped at a Power 4 offer from Boston College despite being committed to Georgia Southern. (Courtesy of Sterling Sanders)

“(A prospect will) tell his position coach at the school that he’s committed to, ‘Hey, I just want to take an OV here just to check it out,’” the staffer said. “‘A trip for my mom, Coach. A trip for my mom.’ And then it comes down the line, and that’s where they end up going.

“Very rare is it a flip that you don’t know about. Flips you don’t know about tend to happen literally within the 24 hours of signing day and someone’s offered more (name, image and likeness money).”

Indeed, with the introduction of NIL into college sports, plenty of flips can be financially motivated. At last year’s Under Armour All-America Game media day, one prospect said a school told him if he committed early and helped bring other recruits into the class, he could earn $40,000 a month until he signed. Another recruit said a school offered him a signing bonus equivalent to the price of “a really nice car.”

“I think with NIL … some people love the opportunity, the brand, where they sit on the depth chart and they love the coaches,” the recruiting staffer said. “And some of them will go to a school and flip for $50,000 more.

“That’s one of those, ‘How do you react?’ If it’s about the money, did that kid give us a chance to put more money on the table and we didn’t have it, we couldn’t do it, we didn’t feel like he was valued at that number? Or it’s like, ‘OK, you know what? This is going to be a numbers game and we’re going to keep battling.’”

Merritt, ranked No. 120 overall in the Class of 2025, said another top prospect who flipped in a previous cycle told him the head coach asked to give him three days to see whether the school could come up with more money to keep him. The prospect still flipped, but with that in mind, Merritt gave Alabama and its collective a two-day window to retain him before he called Nebraska coaches and flipped to the Cornhuskers.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories,” Merritt said. “So I wanted to tell Alabama first just in case they were going to try to do something crazy to try to keep me. I wanted to make sure I told them first.”

The Crimson Tide ultimately didn’t make any NIL changes, said Merritt, who lives in Kansas and first started seriously thinking about nearby Nebraska when he watched the Cornhuskers beat Colorado 28-10 in September.

His process began as many flips do.

“It basically just starts with almost, like, flirting with the other school a little bit,” he said.  “They’ll text you every now and then and then maybe give you a call and you’ll entertain it.”

Midway through the fall, Merritt made a pros and cons list with his parents for Nebraska and Alabama. Nebraska came out on top.

He first broke the news to the Alabama staff and then had a video call with Nebraska coach Matt Rhule to tell him the good news.

“Then I called the defensive coordinator and they were actually in a defensive position meeting, which was amazing,” Merritt said. “I called him and told him and they all started jumping up in the meeting room. It was super funny.”

Merritt, of course, didn’t know it at the time, but Nebraska’s defensive coordinator, Tony White, would execute his own flip a few weeks later when he left to become the new defensive coordinator at Florida State.

The Big Ten staffer said that though it’s very frustrating to lose a prospect, there’s something to be said for being the flipper as opposed to the flippee.

“That,” the staffer said, “is so satisfying.”

Don’t be surprised when there are a host of flips this week during the early signing period.

Last-minute NIL offers can change everything. And the transfer portal has made it such that high school recruits feel as though they need to issue a commitment as early as possible to lock down a spot in a class — even if they’re not truly ready to make a decision.

“You really go into the season just confused and lost, just trying to figure out where your team’s going to stand,” said three-star defensive lineman Wilnerson Telemaque, who flipped from Wisconsin to West Virginia in early November and still intends to sign with the Mountaineers despite coach Neal Brown’s firing Sunday evening.

“Because of the transfer portal, there’s not a lot of schools taking as many high school kids as they used to. So now, they tell us to do our OVs in the summer, make sure we lock in a spot and then see how it goes during the season. Now, with colleges giving more uncommittable offers during the season, sadly, those offers that you think are real, they’re actually real for transfer portal guys.”

Wilnerson Telemaque flipped from Wisconsin to West Virginia. (Courtesy of Wilnerson Telemaque)

The hardest part of flipping, Merritt said, is breaking the news to the coaching staff from the previous school.

Merritt marked off an entire day to call Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, outside linebackers coach Christian Robinson and general manager Courtney Morgan to explain his decision.

“That was probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my recruiting process,” he said. “I wanted to do it the right way. I didn’t want to just kind of flip or text people. I wanted to call a lot of the guys.”

Three-star running back Justin Thurman, who flipped from Notre Dame to Kansas in mid-November, did the same.

“I obviously had a respectful conversation with the coaches at Notre Dame,” Thurman said. “I just told them that basically, ‘I feel like I’ve decided to flip my commitment and thank you for the opportunity’ because not everybody gets those opportunities to play high-caliber football. But at the end of the day, I really felt like it was the best decision for me to flip schools.”

He made it clear he didn’t want to burn any bridges with Notre Dame.

“You never know what can happen in this college world, especially with just all the dynamics … just really since the transfer portal came into effect.”

In the meantime, Merritt, Thurman, Telemaque and Sanders said they feel at peace now that their decision is made, the flip complete. All that’s left is to make it official Wednesday with the paperwork.

“My advice to an athlete flipping, I just feel like once you flip, just know that you’re making the right move, the right decision,” said three-star safety Charleston Floyd, who flipped from Georgia Southern to Old Dominion in October.

“(You’re) just putting yourself before anything, following your heart. If you feel like it’s the best move for you, make the move.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo courtesy of Sterling Sanders)

Colorado star quarterback Shedeur Sanders wanted to celebrate with both his parents on senior day Friday. 

He wanted this so much he went to find his mom, Pilar, and convinced her to participate in the event, even though his father, head coach Deion Sanders, was there, according to dialogue between Shedeur and brother Shilo in a video posted to the official Shilo Sanders YouTube channel.

“My brother [Shedeur] just got my mom from the stands cause of the senior day, and we didn’t know we had to walk. They’re not gonna. That’s like World War III trying to get them to walk together,” Shilo said. 

Shedeur and Shilo walked with Deion across the field during their celebration, and they met their mother on the other side, according to the video. Deion patted his sons on the back when they got close to Pilar, then walked away quickly. 

Pilar then hugged her boys at the middle of the field as they celebrated and posed for photos. 

Colorado won its last home game 52-0 against Oklahoma State. 

NFL WIFE DEVON MOSTERT RECEIVES RACIST HATE ONLINE FOR DEFENDING DESANTIS AGAINST HARRIS

Deion and Pilar got married in 1999. At the time, she was a model, and he was an NFL star at the height of his fame as a player. Together they had Shilo, Shedeur and daughter Shelomi. 

The couple filed for divorce in 2013. It was Sanders’ second divorce. He split from his first wife, Carolyn Chambers, in 1998, one year before marrying Pilar. Deion and Chambers had two children together — Deion Jr. and Deiondre.

In his 2013 divorce with Pilar, Sanders won custody of all three of the couple’s children initially, and Pilar was awarded visitation rights. Still, there were custody battles later. 

Prior to the divorce being finalized, Pilar alleged a prenuptial agreement between her and Deion was forged in 2012. She was seeking to get more money in alimony and child support payments from the Pro Football Hall of Famer. 

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders walks to the sideline before a game against Texas Tech Nov. 9, 2024, in Lubbock, Texas.  (AP Photo/Annie Rice)

“It’s greed,” Deion said in court at the time. “You signed the contract. We had a prenuptial, and now you don’t like the terms of it because of the realization that it’s over, your lifestyle will no longer be the same way. It’s greed.”

The judge who oversaw the dispute said Pilar Sanders signed the agreement, that she did so voluntarily and that she cannot bring a claim that it is invalid before the court again.

“It’s David and Goliath,” Pilar’s attorney, Larry Friedman, said, according to NBC Dallas-Forth Worth. “We stay the course. We’re the underdog, and it’s hard to win when you play by the rules.”

“I didn’t marry hm for money, obviously,” Pilar told NBC Dallas-Forth Worth. “I’ve been married to him for 14 years. My intent was to marry forever, but, obviously, it wasn’t his.”

Deion also filed a defamation lawsuit against Pilar, claiming she tarnished his reputation with allegations of domestic violence. Deion won that lawsuit, and an investigation found no evidence to support Pilar’s claims. 

Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) and head coach Deion Sanders after a two-point conversion in the fourth quarter against the Colorado State Rams at Folsom Field. (Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports)

Pilar later won custody of her two youngest children, Shedeur and Shelomi, in 2017. Still, Deion has been a heavy presence in Shedeur’s life throughout his college career as his head coach at both Jackson State and Colorado. 

Deion has said he devoted himself to Christianity shortly after his first divorce. Sanders opened up about his devotion to Christ during an interview on “Running Wild” with Bear Grylls in November 2023.

“That’s when I went through my first divorce in which the only things that I knew that truly loved me were my two kids. Now they’re gone, now they’ve been taken away. It was devastating, and I went through suicidal thoughts, a suicidal period,” Sanders said. 

“I ran this car off the side of the highway, and, at the bottom, I thought this car would just flip, and it didn’t flip. And I was still there. Shortly after that, I just had to come to the Lord with my hands up and say, ‘I’m done. I can’t do it anymore. You got me. I give up. God, you take me.’”

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Kuron Jabari Jr. was the original believer.

Back in early March, before DeShaun Foster had concocted his first spring practice plan or devised a tentative depth chart, Jabari became the first high school prospect to give the new UCLA coach a verbal commitment.

The cornerback from Corona Centennial was drawn by a budding culture rooted in what Foster had done when he starred for the Bruins more than two decades earlier.

“He’s a great,” Jabari said last weekend while standing on the Rose Bowl sideline before UCLA’s 20-13 victory over Fresno State, “so he knows what it takes to be great.”

As the early signing period for high school players arrives Wednesday, Foster is about to get a much better sense of who else is with him.

The likely departures of running back T.J. Harden and quarterback Justyn Martin through the transfer portal after they were expected to be major contributors essentially planted a massive “Help wanted” sign outside the Bruins’ practice facility.

While most replacements for the team’s 14 departed starters (and counting) will come from the transfer portal and the current roster, a few also be could found in a recruiting class that Foster and his staff largely salvaged after their hiring in February.

If all goes well, the biggest save would come Wednesday.

Epi Sitanilei, a four-star edge rusher from St. John Bosco who is the highest-rated prospect among the 18 high school players verbally committed to UCLA, visited Ohio State last weekend and is believed to be strongly considering the Buckeyes.

Of course, Ohio State didn’t help its cause by losing the rivalry game to Michigan and having a postgame melee break out on its home field.

“For UCLA, if he was going to go to a game, that was probably the game to go to,” said Greg Biggins, a national recruiting analyst for 247Sports, “but I still think Ohio State is a tough place to say no to.”

Keeping Sitanilei would preserve the headliner in a recruiting class that’s heavy on edge rushers and includes a quartet of four-star prospects in Sitanilei, quarterback Madden Iamaleava (Long Beach Poly), edge rusher Cole Cogshell (Muir) and running back Karson Cox (Oak Hills).

As currently constructed, the class is ranked No. 35 nationally by 247Sports and No. 11 among the 18 Big Ten teams.

“It doesn’t have the star power at the top of the board that gets a lot of people excited, but it’s got some quality depth at key positions, namely edge,” Biggins said. “All the guys they got are pretty solid with some upside.”

There could be two late additions to the class. LaRue Zamorano, a three-star cornerback from Corona Centennial, decommitted from Michigan State as part of a possible move to Westwood. Demetrice Martin, the Spartans defensive backs coach who was a big part of Zamorano’s commitment, could bring the prospect with him to UCLA as part of Martin’s expected return to the school as an assistant coach working with the secondary.

UCLA also is expected to be the leader for Lucien Holland after the three-star edge rusher from Inglewood High decommitted from Boise State this week.

Biggins listed Sitanilei, Cogshell and Cox as candidates to play as freshmen. Harden’s presumed departure means there should be plenty of carries available for the running backs, including Cox.

“He’s a tough kid, runs well, super instinctive and a natural athlete,” Biggins said of Cox. “He’s kind of what you call a box-checker — he checks everything you want to see in a running back.”

Foster has said he wanted to get UCLA’s high school recruiting rolling like it was back when he played for the Bruins and they vied for the top class in the nation every year. UCLA’s 2026 class, which includes four players in its infancy, is ranked No. 14 nationally by 247Sports.

“Once we can get some more talent, we have a chance to be top-five,” said Foster, who has emphasized the need to keep the best California players home instead of losing them to other schools in the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences. “We want to show how recruiting is gonna go around here in the future.”

Jabari said he’s part of a text group chat with several fellow recruits in the 2025 class, everyone eager to help Foster and the Bruins build on winning four of their last six games this season.

“Every time after a big win,” Jabari said, “we go in the group chat and get hyped.”