Sports
The Golden At-Bat rule could give MLB a new shine. But is it worth it?
When the commissioner of baseball speaks, we listen.
So we were listening a few weeks ago when Rob Manfred stopped by the podcast of Puck’s John Ourand and dropped this giant breadcrumb about a rule change that seems like it might be coming someday to a ballpark near you — and a mobile device even closer to you:
“There are a variety of (rule change ideas) that are being talked about out there,” Manfred said. “One of them — there was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting — was the idea of a Golden At-Bat.”
The Golden At-Bat? What the heck is that? That’s what you’re thinking, right? I can help with that.
First off, it’s not to be confused with the Golden Goose, the Golden Retriever or even the Golden Arches. It won’t set you up for life, bark at the mail truck or add 1,500 calories to your digestive system in the next seven minutes.
But it is an idea that would change everything about how baseball — the ultimate team sport — has always worked. So what the heck is it? I’ve been asking that question — and others about this rule idea — for months. So let’s try to explain every golden little thing about it … not to mention how it’s likely to be received, by players, front offices and the baseball gods.
OK, what is a Golden At-Bat?
What if a team could choose one at-bat in every game to send its best hitter to the plate even if it wasn’t that guy’s turn to hit? That’s the Golden At-Bat concept in a nutshell.
Say there are two outs in the 10th inning in October. The Yankees and Guardians are tied. Does this ring a bell at all? But in this alternate October universe, it’s not Juan Soto who is due up. It’s, say, Oswaldo Cabrera. Except the Yankees say: No, no, no. We’re going to use our Golden AB here … and send up Soto. Then home run magic happens.
“Wouldn’t that have been the (ultimate) Golden At-Bat homer?” one front-office executive mused, as we were talking about this concept. “Can we send Juan Soto up there to do that? He actually did hit that homer in that moment.”
He did. And that’s the goal. So should baseball change the rules to attempt to create more of those moments? That’s the question.
How would the rule work?
How would this rule be worded? Sorry. That’s a mystery nobody can answer yet. The truth is, baseball hasn’t settled on those details. And MLB officials declined to speak with The Athletic about any possible future rule changes. But lots of variations have been tossed around. Here are some that I’ve heard.
• Each team gets to pick one at-bat — at any point in the game, but only once — to play its Golden AB card. So would it save that card for The Juan Soto Moment? Or would it play it in the second inning, with the bases loaded and a chance to blow up a game? Strategy alert!
• Or there’s this option: Each team gets one Golden AB per game — except only in the seventh inning or later.
• Or there’s the variation I’d vote for — where only a team that is trailing (or tied) in the ninth or later gets to use a Golden AB. I’m a fan of less is more, and two Golden ABs every game (one per team) might be overkill.
• There’s also this potential wrinkle: The Royals use their Golden AB to let Bobby Witt Jr. lead off the ninth. He makes an out. But who’s batting second? Whaddaya know, it’s Witt’s turn in the lineup. So here he comes again. Yes, that could be a thing.
So what variation will actually end up happening (if any of them do)? We have many golden miles to travel before we can answer that.
Why would MLB want to mess with the baseball gods?
For almost 150 years, the epic late-inning moments in this sport have all happened organically. So you’d be messing with some seriously embedded forces in the universe if you suddenly drop in a rule change that practically scripts them to happen. Why would the powers that be even want to go there?
All right, let’s think this through. How heart-pounding was that Soto at-bat in the ALCS that ended with a homer? How unforgettable was the final at-bat of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Mike Trout versus Shohei Ohtani?
They made for mesmerizing baseball theater, right? So if you were designing the sport from scratch, would you want more of those moments or fewer? I won’t even answer for you. Just think about it.
But while you’re thinking, let’s go beyond baseball. If it’s the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes is going to have the ball in his hands with 47 seconds to play. Is that a problem? Ho, ho, ho. It’s a reason — THE reason — to watch.
Or if it’s the NBA Finals, you think there’s any chance that Steph Curry … or LeBron James … or Nikola Jokić might have a chance to do something special as the clock ticks down? Oh, only every possession. Is that a problem? Let’s say no.
So why would Manfred’s sport want to mess with the baseball gods? That’s why. Why should only those other sports get to have their games decided by their biggest stars?
His sport isn’t there yet. The pros are still duking it out with the cons. The details aren’t even set in pencil, let alone in stone. But if the goal is to create moments and memories, the Golden At-Bat could be a vehicle to create more of those. So who could possibly complain?
Ha. Don’t answer that … yet!
C’mon, could this really happen?
Is the Golden AB really going to happen? Who the heck knows — but let’s still go with this guess, of … yes!
On Ourand’s podcast, Manfred described this idea (and others) as being “in the conversation-only stage right now.” So that makes it sound iffy — except for one thing:
He chose to talk about this out loud, where everyone could hear it.
He also used the word “buzz” to describe the response. Which is interesting, because from what I can discern, it’s not the buzziest buzz in the baseball cosmos at the moment.
It’s clearly not as buzzy as the electronic strike zone anyway. It wasn’t a topic at the owners’ meetings that were held in the past two weeks. And there is no evidence that this concept has even been presented to the players at any meeting of the competition committee.
But despite all that, it wouldn’t be a shock to see the sport test this soon — possibly even as soon as … (drum roll, please) next year!
Where would the test be?
Over on the minor-league side of this sport, folks have heard “buzz” that the league would like to test the Golden AB in some form in the minors sometime in the next couple of years. But would that test be coming as soon as 2025? Can’t answer that, but I’d lean toward no.
So if any variation of the Golden AB does surface next year, here’s where I’d guess you’d see it:
In the MLB All-Star Game.
Manfred also dropped that breadcrumb on Ourand’s podcast. When the conversation veered toward possible tweaks to that game, Manfred tipped his golf cap to his TV partners at Fox Sports, saying: “They’re always thinking. They’re never short of ideas. And they are reasonable.”
So what All-Star Game ideas had gotten his attention? See if this sounds familiar.
“Most of the changes we have discussed,” he said, “involve producing the matchups, in the context of an exhibition game, that the fans want to see the most. You know, more freedom in terms of substitution and whatnot. I am receptive to those ideas, in the context of an exhibition game.”
Does that sound Golden-AB-ish to you? It does to me, except that if baseball goes down that trail in the All-Star Game, it might not stop at just one at-bat.
Several years ago, Fox tossed out a slightly different concept that went nowhere at the time — but since has gotten enough traction that someone asked me what I thought of it a few months back. Since it’s the All-Star Game and the biggest stars aren’t on the field after the fourth or fifth inning, how about this fun idea to keep you tuned in:
Before the game, each team could designate three All-Star starters who could re-enter the game in the seventh inning or later. Then you might see something like this:
Emmanuel Clase enters to nail down another American League win … but wait. Here come Ohtani, Bryce Harper and Mookie Betts back into the game for the National League to face him. I’d watch!
Or maybe each team could throw out five names … and then fans could vote on which three could return.
Or … you could just limit this fun to one Golden AB.
I was so curious about this idea, I asked a bunch of players what they thought of it at this summer’s All-Star Game. We’ll get to those entertaining exchanges shortly. Just know this, for now: If the league wanted to try this next July, I don’t think they would get furious blowback from the players.
But before we roll out that player reaction, you might be wondering …
Who thinks of this stuff?
Would it surprise you to know that this brainstorm goes back well before the 2020s? David Samson, the former Marlins president who now hosts the popular “Nothing Personal” podcast, has said on his show that he brought it up as far back as a decade ago.
Back then, he was a member of a previous version of MLB’s competition committee. Nothing formal was ever proposed. It was more like: What about this idea …
So how’d that go? About how you’d expect.
“The view was, you are basically ruining the sanctity of the game,” Samson told The Athletic. “The brilliance of the history of the game is that, hey, if the right guy’s up, the right guy’s up — and if not, he’s not. And many times, there are heroes that are made by people who otherwise are not heroes, because they had an opportunity, as a big-league player, to have a big at-bat.”
Brett Phillips, Rajai Davis and Bucky Dent second that motion! So that idea went nowhere at the time. Samson laughed as he recalled: “I didn’t take it personally.”
But now rock your time machine forward and think about what’s happened in this sport over the past couple of years. By which we mean … the pitch clock happened. And shockingly, the Baseball Earth did not stop spinning.
So what’s possible after your sport has successfully challenged the sanctity of another age-old baseball adage, The Game Without a Clock?
“It makes people in the game more comfortable talking about change,” Manfred told Ourand.
So suddenly, those ideas from partners like Fox, which used to be met with Ummm, not yet, are now viewed as Not Even Totally Crazy. But now can those ideas make the big leap from the whiteboard to the emerald ballfields of real life? I asked that question to a bunch of people in the game. Let’s hear from them.
Are the players ready for the Golden At-Bat?
As I mentioned earlier, I surveyed players about this five months ago at the All-Star Game. I shrewdly asked them first about trying it in the All-Star Game, then smoothly glided into What About the Real Games mode. Let’s roll the highlights.
Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich — When I asked Yelich about how he felt about three starters re-entering the All-Star Game in the late innings, his face lit up.
“That would be kind of cool,” he said. “I mean, it’s an exhibition game after all, right? So you want to keep it to where it’s a game, but also, if you want to add a wrinkle that makes it more entertaining, or do stuff geared for the fans and keep the entertainment value high, I’m all for it.”
But when I asked if he’d be open to something like the Golden AB in regular-season games — in the vein of Steph Curry having the ball in the last minute of a hoops game — his wheels started spinning.
“I’d have to see it more,” he replied, but didn’t rule anything out.
“Do you think it’s too gimmicky?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I mean, look, we’re doing stuff to change the game up a little bit and make it exciting. So I’m open to any idea, and you kind of just see how it works out. And if it’s good, it stays. If it’s not, you kind of just keep going.”
I didn’t hear a “no way” in there. On to the next player!
Twins shortstop Carlos Correa — Correa was equally cool with the All-Star Game version.
“You’re onto something right there,” he said. “It’s fun, right? Just put whoever you want in the ninth inning to hit. That would be great. I love it.”
But what about the regular season? He looked directly into my eyeballs, as if he was searching for a window into what kind of trouble I was trying to lure him into.
“My relievers are going to hate me if I say I agree with that one,” he replied, finally. “I can’t agree with that one because the relievers are going to be under really, really high stress all the time, and then the injuries are going to go even higher.”
We went back and forth a couple of times. Then I pointed out that he was down with making the All-Star Game as entertaining as possible. So if we brought this idea to the late innings of real games, wouldn’t that be like LeBron taking the last shot?
“OK, I agree with you,” he said. “But I think you should be able to bring in whatever pitcher you want then.”
“You could do that, too,” I replied, grateful for any meeting of the minds.
“You can’t do that now,” he said.
Actually, you can, I think. But again, that wasn’t a complete shutdown. So since he’d raised a new concern, it was time to ask a relief pitcher about this.
Phillies reliever Matt Strahm — Strahm, like Yelich, is a free thinker who always sees the big picture. Not surprisingly, he agreed instantly that the All-Star Game idea was a good one. That was great to hear, I told him, because a hitter had theorized earlier that relievers would get mad if baseball did that.
“I mean, some of them probably, yeah,” he said. “But as a reliever, you know what the fans are here for. Every time I’m wearing a gray uniform, they all want to see me get taken deep or walked off or whatever. That’s one of the most exciting plays in the game. So I understand it. And I think we can maybe sacrifice that for a game that doesn’t count.”
All right, but what about in a game that does count?
“I wouldn’t like that,” he said, without hesitation. “Nah, that messes with baseball history too much. I don’t like that one. Say you have a guy like Craig Kimbrel, who is going to be chasing 500 saves. Then he’s got to do it at the end of his career against Aaron Judge and Juan Soto for every save? Nah. That’s not right.”
Hey, I told him, if you want to be the best, don’t you have to beat the best? He laughed, but he wasn’t falling for my little trap.
“A hundred percent,” he said. “I agree with that statement, but I don’t agree with that rule.”
Got it. So, relief pitchers: Not all in.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman — Almost every time I see Freeman, he knows I have some inspired idea to run by him. So he was ready to poke holes in this one, in that good-natured Freddie Freeman way of his. We began with the All-Star scenario — three stars coming back out of the cornfield to bat in the ninth.
“Well, they’re all All-Stars, you know,” he said. “So I think we all would be OK with whoever goes up in the ninth inning. You just want Shohei and Aaron Judge to hit every single time? I totally understand. I would, too. I’d rather just watch them hit nine times.
“Look, I like your idea, Jayson. But I’m gonna fight against that, because they’re all All-Stars, and I wouldn’t mind anybody hitting.”
I knew where this was going next, but I went there anyway. How about the regular season, I asked.
“No, no, no,” he said. “I’m old school, you know, even as a young guy. I like baseball. I’m a baseball purist. So I’m gonna go no.”
“Let me play devil’s advocate here,” I told him. “Steph Curry always has the ball at the end of the game in basketball, right? Why doesn’t that work in baseball?”
“I get it,” he said. “I would rather watch Shohei hit 20 times a game. It would be really good for the Dodgers if he did that too.”
“So as long as it’s Shohei, you’re fine with it?” I kidded him.
“No, I’m good with Mookie,” he said. “I’m good with Will Smith. I’m good with pretty much our whole team. Look, as long as it doesn’t mean anything — like the All-Star Game now is just for fun — you can do whatever you want.”
“But what about the actual game?” I asked.
“Let’s just play six innings and do a Home Run Derby for the last three,” he bantered, playfully.
“No, let’s not do that,” I said.
“Why?” he said, laughing. “So you don’t like my ideas, but I’ve got to like all of yours?”
We were having such a good time at this point, it almost didn’t matter how this wound up. But then, in a shocking twist, it turned out I’d worn him down.
“Oh, I don’t care,” he said, finally. “You know me. Whatever the rules are, just tell me, and I’ll abide by them.”
That’s the spirit. So the verdict from the players: Not in, but not 100 percent out. So it’s time to survey another important demographic …
Are front offices ready for the Golden At-Bat?
This was not what you’d call a scientific poll. It was more like a mission to find somebody — anybody — inside an MLB front office who even knew what a Golden At-Bat was. Turns out that was a short list.
But I found one exec who loves this idea and one who hates it. They were each granted anonymity so they could speak freely about prospective rule changes, always a sensitive topic for people at their level.
Not a fan of the Golden AB — The club official who is skeptical wanted to make it clear he’s not one of those old-school execs who hates every new rule. The last wave of rule changes — pitch clock, stolen-base incentives, etc. — were great, he said.
“With the other rule changes … you’re trying to create the best version of baseball,” he said. “But with this rule, the Golden At-Bat, it’s like you’re trying to create a different sport. You’re trying to create something else that’s kind of like baseball, but not really.”
I gave him a rundown of every possible selling point for the Golden AB. He wasn’t budging.
“I understand the value of Mike Trout versus Shohei Ohtani to decide the WBC,” he replied, “and if we can create that every day, you have a reason for people to tune in. Yes, that’s great. It’s just not baseball.
“It is fundamentally changing the character of the sport and the batting order, which is a huge function of how the sport lives. Just to change that, to try to make the eighth or ninth inning more interesting, I don’t know. That one is hard for me, in ways that changing the infield shift rules and other things are not. Those rules are about returning the game to the way it was meant to be played. That is not this. This is like the opposite of that.”
I laid out the potential upside one more time. No dice.
“It’s not for me,” he said. “I feel like it’s (Savannah) Banana Ball-type stuff, as opposed to how baseball should be played.”
Big fan of the Golden AB — So how many people, in front offices across North America, think the way that last exec thinks? I’d guess most of them — and who’s to say they’re wrong? But for the other side of this argument, let’s listen to an official of a different team who has come to recognize that his sport needs to serve its audience — or, even more importantly, its future audience.
“The world is changing,” this official said. “Look at the way entertainment is consumed now. Look who you’re competing with. Today’s fans have grown up on their phones. … They’re used to getting exactly what they want, what they like, what they find engaging and compelling — and they want it now. And they want to watch it for a few minutes and move on. So the Golden At-Bat accomplishes all those things.”
But there’s also an important baseball reason, he went on. At a time when the league batting average and on-base rates have sunk to levels we haven’t seen in half a century, the sport should be thinking outside the box to find ways to create not just more drama but also more runs.
“Hitting is so hard,” he said. “So why would we not want to give more plate appearances to the best hitters? Something like the Golden At-Bat gives one of your highest-leverage appearances in a game to one of your most talented hitters. I like it. I think that’s another small thing you can do to help offense.”
Excellent point — but not one that impressed the next guy we surveyed …
Joe Maddon: Not a fan
So what would managers think of the Golden AB?
It would be one more pivotal chess move that would get dropped on their game board every night. So would they enjoy the strategic component of it? Or do they already have enough on their plates, their lineup cards and their spreadsheets?
I went looking for the most candid response possible. So I chose a former manager, not a current manager, because he could speak more openly. But I also wanted an innovator and someone not far removed from the dugout. So I called the ex-manager of the Rays, Cubs and Angels, Joe Maddon. Turns out this was one innovation he wanted no part of.
“You’re starting to play this game with a joystick, and not human beings,” he said, pithily.
That sounded like a vote for humans over joysticks. But just so it was clear, Maddon kept laying out his issues with this rule. Let’s sum up three of them.
This isn’t basketball — So LeBron has the ball at the end of every basketball game — and there were 120 Dodgers games this year in which Ohtani didn’t get a swing in the ninth inning? That’s not a good enough reason, Maddon said, to mess with such a fundamental part of baseball.
“That’s just how that game’s built,” he said. “Our game is not built that way. Why do we want to bastardize our game and make it like everybody else?”
I decided again to play devil’s advocate. Wasn’t Trout versus Ohtani awesome baseball theater? Of course, Maddon said. So if the sport, with this rule, could create the ability to have more moments like that, what’s the downside?
“The more we see things, the less impact they have.” Maddon said. “The Trout-Ohtani thing was outstanding because you rarely see it. You don’t see Halley’s Comet every night.”
It’s anti-“team” — As I was outlining the reasoning behind the Golden AB, I could hear Maddon scribbling on a sheet of paper.
“As you were explaining that,” he said, “I wrote down the word ‘team.’ What is that anymore?”
As a manager, Maddon said he was constantly concerned about keeping his entire roster connected, not just his stars. So if one of those stars was going to bat every night in place of the same group of non-stars, there’s danger in that.
“There’s no way you can convince me that you’re going to take this (non-star) part of the team and kind of make them moot in tough situations,” he said. “After all, when a team succeeds in those circumstances (and the non-stars come through), it really builds a lot within the group.”
I asked if he would find it more palatable if the league tried it out in the All-Star Game.
“They could do whatever they want,” he said. “I don’t care. To me, it’s not interesting at all, not even a little bit. I find nothing interesting about it. I find it totally counter to the team concept in the game, everything you preach on a daily basis.”
It’s pseudo-strategy — Lots of changes in baseball were good and important, Maddon said. The pitch clock. The wild card. Lowering the mound in the 1960s.
“Those were needs — things the game needed,” he said. “Needs that were implemented to make the game more watchable. But needs should never impact strategy (so significantly).”
“Don’t ever confuse the word ‘change’ with the word ‘progress,’” he said later. “Change does not necessarily equal progress. Change could be regress. And in this situation, it may be totally regressive, because the game no longer becomes the game when you start messing with strategy on that level.”
Then he asked this:
“Who are we trying to serve with this? And what is the purpose of the whole thing? I don’t quite understand that.”
I’m glad he posed those questions. It’s an important aspect of this. So let’s spin off that thought and ask a question of our own:
This is interesting — but are we sure it’s worth it?
Earlier in this discussion, I posed a question I knew the answer to: Who could possibly complain? Ha. We’ve learned exactly who could possibly complain. Managers. Club officials. Players. And, of course, fans. That isn’t the entire population of the planet. But it sure covers every possible voting bloc.
It’s so easy to poke holes in an idea like the Golden AB. Here’s another one: Wouldn’t it throw all of baseball history out of whack?
Depending on which version of the Golden AB you chose, it could get Judge an extra 120 at-bats a year — many of them with lots of runners on base. So if he hit 82 homers and drove in 170 runs some year, are there enough asterisks in the world to slap on the record books? Maybe not.
But is that really going to be how this goes? Baseball could make sure it doesn’t just by limiting the Golden AB to only the ninth inning and only when a team is trailing. Voila! That problem is solved. Then it’s a much more limited number of at-bats. And what’s the problem?
“We should not be afraid of doing something that is entertainment-based, but also competitive-based,” Samson said. “Aaron Judge is not going to hit a home run every at-bat. Could he hit one every three at-bats? I don’t think so, because then he’d hit 200 home runs a year. So just by giving him the Golden At-Bat every ninth inning, the Yankees are not going to win 150 games. And of course, he’s not going to hit a home run every time.”
But what about the box scores? Wouldn’t this wreak havoc with the box scores? How would they deal with this: Bryce Harper batted in the three-hole and the seven-hole in this game? And he hit a home run from both of them? Wouldn’t that break every computer in America?
I asked that question of Tom Thress, the president of Retrosheet, which has a database of box scores dating back more than a century. He didn’t sound worried.
“Back in the day,” he said, “there used to be the occasional ‘courtesy runner’ — usually after a batter was hit by a pitch — where someone pinch-ran for the player but the player was allowed to return to the field in the next inning. … The parallel here is that sometimes the ‘courtesy runner’ was a guy who was already in the game.”
If you click on Retrosheet, you’ll notice that those courtesy runners did not crash their site. It’s still up and running, despite that affront to the rules and norms of baseball. So if the Golden AB becomes one of those rules and norms, everyone will figure that out, too, he predicted.
And how about the unraveling of the team concept that Maddon was highly agitated about? It’s an issue. But even Maddon conceded it could be dealt with by adopting the Golden AB in the minor leagues first.
“You’d just say, ‘Listen, you want to win, right? You’re part of the team, so if this guy gets this at-bat for you, the team has a better chance to win again,’” Maddon said. “That could be so brainwashed in the minor leagues. I could totally see that happening. That would be part of it, where you convince young players of that.”
So for every problem, there’s a possible solution — if you want to seek one. The question everyone has to answer is: Is it worth it?
“That’s the whole thing,” Maddon said. “What is worth it? What are they trying to accomplish? What is the end game right here? How is it going to benefit the game now and in the future? That’s where you have to convince me, because I don’t see it.”
He’s living proof that the Golden AB is not for everyone. But for the people in the sport who are warming to it rapidly, it’s worth fighting for.
“Those of us who love the game, we all have the same goal,” Samson said. “We’re looking for viral moments. Some people say: ‘Let’s just let it happen — and if it never happens, it never happens.’ But if you could create it, it’s not clickbait, because that is too insulting a word to put to this. If you can, it’s creating a memory — which is what we’re in the business of, is creating memories and entertaining people.
“And if you can do it in a way that is only helpful,” he said, “there is zero downside.”
Well … what about all those people who see all downside and no upside? We should listen to their voices, too. So it might take a while to sort all that out. Which means I don’t know if you’ll ever see the Golden AB come to a big-league game — unless it’s the All-Star Game. I also don’t know who’s right or wrong in this debate.
I just know the commissioner of baseball threw this out there for all of us to ponder. So we’re pondering. And even the people who hate it are already pondering how they’d react if it actually happens someday.
“I can say now I think that’s a terrible idea,” said the skeptical exec quoted earlier. “But then, if they put it in play, I’m like everyone else. I’d say: ‘OK, how do we use it to take the most advantage of it?’”
(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: Mark Blinch / Getty Images)
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.
GO DEEPER
Just say no! The stress of turning down scholarship offers: ‘It makes a man out of you’
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.
“(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.”
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
Deion Sanders, ex-wife were apart at senior day celebration for sons Shedeur and Shilo: 'Like WWIII'
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.
“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.
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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Sports
UCLA tries to fend off Ohio State, keep its recruiting class intact as signing day nears
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.”
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