Sports
The art of college football recruiting flips: ‘It’s almost like a breakup. It’s so disheartening’
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.
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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)
Sports
Ed Orgeron on who should be out of College Football Playoff, Lane Kiffin’s move to LSU and his coaching plans
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The College Football Playoff begins Friday, and emotions are running high for several fan bases.
Notre Dame was ranked 10th in the penultimate CFP rankings but missed the playoffs to both Alabama, which lost a third game, and Miami, which were ranked lower going into championship weekend but beat Notre Dame during the season, which apparently took precedence.
Ed Orgeron did not have to worry about his playoff status while he was coaching LSU to a title amid a perfect season in 2019, but he has an idea of who should be in and out this year.
LSU coach Ed Orgeron runs off the field with his team before an NCAA college football game against Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Clubb)
“I don’t think a team with three losses ought to be playing for the national championship. Notre Dame should have got in ahead of Alabama,” Orgeron told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.
Bama getting in prompted calls of bias and/or collusion, considering the playoff is broadcast on ESPN and ABC, the same network that the SEC has a major media rights deal with.
“The SEC was dominant. But now, the Big Ten, Big 12 are catching up. They’ve had the national champ a couple of years now. I don’t know what’s happened with the SEC and bias, all that stuff. Is there a chance that they have it? I’m not going to get into that. But I do know this — they’re very strong,” Orgeron added.
The SEC figures to remain strong, as Lane Kiffin went from Ole Miss to Orgeron’s former LSU in a controversial move. Orgeron, though, said Kiffin, his former colleague at Tennessee and USC, made the right move, given he hardly had a choice.
Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin (left) and LSU Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron (right) shake hands after a game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. (Petre Thomas/USA TODAY Sports)
ED ORGERON GIVES ADVICE TO SHERRONE MOORE AFTER SAGA THAT LEFT HIM FIRED, ARRESTED
“Look, the timing of it, when he did it, that’s his choice. But he had to do it at that time to get the job he wanted. The calendar is wrong in college football. I wish they had the rule like the NFL, that you cannot talk to a coach until their season is over,” Orgeron said.
As for advice to get LSU back to the promised land?
“Keep on doing what you’re doing. He knows what he’s doing. Recruit, evaluate like he’s doing. He’s the king of the transfer portal. He’ll be able to dominate the SEC like he’s been doing. Keep on doing what you’re doing.”
Orgeron last coached in 2021, but his career is certainly not over. In fact, he expects to be somewhere soon, potentially even facing Kiffin.
Then-LSU Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron talks with quarterback Joe Burrow after a victory against the Clemson Tigers in the College Football Playoff national championship game at Mercedes-Benz Superdome. (Matthew Emmons/USA TODAY Sports)
“We’ve been in touch with people. I would take a head coaching job, doesn’t have to be a head coaching job. I’ll take a D-line coach or a recruiting coordinator, but the right situation hasn’t been coming up. I’m in a good position where I could take a job, I don’t have to take a job, but if the right situation comes up, I’m definitely taking it and going to coach. I do believe within the next month something may open, and I’ll be coaching again.”
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SEATTLE — In a matter of minutes, the home of the Seattle Seahawks went from a painfully quiet Lumen “Library” to a rollicking madhouse that sent seismologists scrambling for their ground-motion sensors.
Call it the Sheesh-Quake Game.
In a historic comeback, the Seahawks dug their way out of a 16-point, fourth-quarter ditch to beat the Rams in overtime, 38-37.
Oh, the visitors will agonize over some of the bizarre calls, some deserving of further explanation from the NFL. An ineligible-man-downfield call that wiped out a Rams touchdown when they were a yard away from the end zone? That had people scratching their heads. Then there was that do-or-die two-point conversion that seemingly fell incomplete… but later was reversed. More on that in a moment.
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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 38-37 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Thursday night.
When the Rams wincingly rewind the video of the collapse, they’ll be peering through the cracks in their fingers.
You’ve heard of a no-look pass? This was a no-look finish.
As soothing wins go, this was a warm bubble bath for the Seahawks, who secured a playoff berth and assumed the driver’s seat in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed.
“You hear people late in the year have losses, and you hear people come up here and say, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a good thing for us,’” said Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp, a onetime Rams hero. “It’s much better to be up here right now saying this is going to be a good thing for us.”
Kupp atoned for his first-half fumble with a successful two-point conversion in the fourth quarter — the first of three in a row for the Seahawks — and a 21-yard reception on the winning drive in overtime.
“If you find a way to get a win when you do turn the ball over three times, you do end up down 16 points, or whatever it was, in the fourth quarter, just finding ways to win games when the odds are against you and things aren’t going right — finding a way to fight back — it’s going to be a good thing for us,” Kupp said. “A good thing for us to draw on.”
The Rams are sifting through the debris of a different lesson. It was a reminder that this charmed season, with Matthew Stafford in line to win his first Most Valuable Player honor, can come crashing down at any moment. There’s no more smooth glide path to Santa Clara for the Super Bowl.
As good as it was for most of the game, picking off Sam Darnold twice and sacking him four times, the Rams defense failed to hold up when it counted most. Shades of the three-point loss at Carolina.
Darnold will have a story to tell. He exorcised a lot of demons. The Rams sacked him nine times in the playoffs last season when Darnold was playing for Minnesota, and intercepted six of his passes in two games this season.
“It’s not great when you have interceptions and turnovers, you want to limit that,” said Darnold, the former USC star. “But all you can do is fight back. For us, I was just going to continue to plug away.”
Darnold came through when it counted, completing five passes on the winning drive, then finding the obscure tight end Eric Saubert — his fourth option — wide open in the end zone on the triumphant conversion.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold looks to pass against the Rams in the first half Thursday.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
The second of the three conversions was the game’s most controversial moment. The Seahawks needed it to forge a 30-30 tie with a little more than six minutes remaining in regulation.
Darnold fired a quick screen pass to his left, trying to get the ball to Zach Charbonnet. Rams defender Jared Verse jumped the route and knocked down the pass. Everyone thought the play was dead, including Charbonnet, who casually jogged across the goal line and picked up the ball as it lay in the end zone.
That proved critical because officials — after what seemed like an eternity — ruled that Darnold had thrown a backward pass and the ball was live when Charbonnet picked it up. Therefore, a fumble recovery and successful conversion, tying the game.
Asked later if it felt like a backward pass, Darnold had a half-smile and said, “Um, yeah. It felt like I threw it kind of right on the side. I’m glad Charbs picked it up, and that turned out to be a game-changing play.”
Was that designed to be a backward pass?
“It just happened to be backwards,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily talked about. We were just trying to get it in down there on the goal line.”
The Seahawks were lined up to kick off when officials announced that, upon review, the previous play was successful. Suddenly, the most improbable of come-from-victories was within reach.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, when the home team was trailing, 30-14, the Amazon Prime crew had to do some vamping to keep viewers engaged. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit told some Kurt Warner stories from the “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Hey, it had to be more interesting than this game.
Michaels delivered an obscure stat: When leading by 15 points or more in the fourth quarter, the Rams were 323-1.
Informed of that, Seahawks running back Cam Akers — once shown the door by the Rams — had a wry response.
“Now, they’ve lost two,” he said.
Celebration in one locker room. Silence in another.
Do you believe in meltdowns?
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Sherrone Moore’s booking photo was released about a week after the former Michigan Wolverines football coach was fired from his job and arrested on several charges.
Fox News Digital obtained the booking photo of Moore on Thursday. The picture showed a red-eyed Moore appearing downcast in the Washtenaw County Jail in Michigan.
Sherrone Moore’s booking photo was obtained by Fox News Digital on Dec. 18, 2025. (Washtenaw County Jail)
The photo’s release came as new details emerged in the Moore scandal, including allegations that he “had a long history of domestic violence” against the staffer with whom he allegedly maintained an inappropriate, yearslong relationship.
Court documents obtained by Fox News Digital revealed allegations made by the staffer’s attorney, Heidi Sharp, on the day that Moore allegedly entered her home without permission, which later resulted in his arrest.
Moore appeared in a Washtenaw County court on Friday, where his bond was set at $25,000 and included several conditions, including no contact with the alleged victim in the case. A not guilty plea was entered for him.
Prosecutors detailed the alleged events that led up to Moore’s arrest, including that Moore had engaged in an “intimate relationship” with the Michigan staffer for “a number of years” and that the woman had broken up with him two days before his arrest.
Former Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore appears via video in court in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Dec. 12, 2025. (Ryan Sun/AP Photo)
MICHIGAN FOOTBALL RECRUITS DE-COMMIT FROM PROGRAM AMID SHERRONE MOORE SCANDAL
Prosecutors accused Moore of contacting the staffer via phone calls and texts after the breakup, prompting the victim to contact the University of Michigan and cooperate in its investigation. Moore was subsequently fired from his position as head football coach, which prosecutors said prompted him to show up at the woman’s home.
Moore then allegedly “barged” his way into the residence, grabbed a butter knife and a pair of scissors and then began threatening his own life. According to prosecutors, Moore allegedly told the staffer, “My blood is on your hands” and “You ruined my life.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Moore’s attorney for comment.
Moore faces a felony charge of home invasion in the third degree and two misdemeanor charges of stalking and breaking and entering without the owner’s permission. He was released on bond and is due back in court on Jan. 22.
Sherrone Moore, then-of the Michigan Wolverines, looks on during the second half against the Maryland Terrapins at SECU Stadium on November 22, 2025 in College Park, Maryland. (Chris Bernacchi/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
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Moore took over as head coach for Jim Harbaugh when he left to take the Los Angeles Chargers’ job.
Fox News’ Paulina Dedaj contributed to this report.
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