NIL

JU, UNF college baseball players who stayed loyal are ‘a dying breed’

Published

8 months ago

May 3, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Five JU Dolphins, two UNF Ospreys seniors are close to completing their college careers

Jacksonville University and University of North Florida baseball coaches commend senior athletes who remained committed to their programs.

Loyalty still trumps money for some college student-athletes.

But for how long?

Even in college baseball, where NIL opportunities are much more modest compared to football and basketball, it’s getting more difficult for mid-major conferences to keep their best players.

That’s been especially true at ASUN programs Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida, which have lost some of their biggest stars of the past several years to programs in the SEC, ACC and Big 12.

“It’s turning into travel ball,” said Ospreys senior pitcher Clayton Boroski. “If they don’t like the coach they just up and leave and try to find a better opportunity.”

That’s why the JU and UNF coaches appreciate a handful of seniors who stayed at those respective schools for their entire college careers.

“When they stay, they’re staying because they love this place and they know this is the right place for them,” said Dolphins coach Chris Hayes. “It’s not about the money for them, it’s about the right fit, the right environment, the right experience.”

UNF coach Joe Mercadante said the transfer portal trend in college sports reflects a larger picture.

“It’s just today’s society and where the game is right now,” he said. “Guys are constantly moving around, trying to find the opportunity that best fits them, instead of staying somewhere and learning through some adversity.”

JU right fielder Blake DeLamielleure has been through as much of that adversity as anyone, playing on one conference championship team, on others with losing records and missing all but two games of the 2024 season with a hip injury.

He had almost an entire season to consider going elsewhere. DeLamielleure also watched former high school and college teammate Justin Nadeau transfer to Florida and five JU pitchers go elsewhere, with Evan Chrest and Payton Prescott landing at Florida State — where his cousin Brody DeLamielleure plays.

Blake DeLamielleure had every reason to transfer.

He rejected them all and will go out wearing the same uniform he was issued as a freshman.

“This is my home,” he said.

JU, UNF celebrate loyal seniors

Jacksonville has six seniors who have played for the Dolphins their entire college careers: DeLameilleure, pitchers Richard Long (a Clay graduate), Layton Perry and Blake Barquin, catcher/first baseman Josh Steidl and outfielder Clayton Hodges (Episcopal).

North Florida has two, outfielder Drew Leinenbach and Boroski.

In almost every case, their decision to stay is justified, from a personal and a team standpoint.

Jacksonville (29-16, 15-6) is second in the ASUN’s Graphite Division behind Stetson and has the third-best conference mark and third-best overall record, behind Stetson and Gold Division leader Austin Peay. The Dolphins have already clinched a spot in the ASUN Tournament and are on an eight-game ASUN winning streak entering this weekend’s series at Queens.

North Florida (22-22, 10-11) has already won more games than last season and is one more victory away from matching its total of conference victories in 2024.

After a slow start, DeLamielleure is batting .278 with five homers and team-high totals of 45 RBI and 11 doubles. He’s also just as daring on the basepaths as he ever was, despite the season-ending injury last season when he was trying to go from first to third on a hit, and has stolen 20 bases in 22 attempts.

Long is in the conversation for a second ASUN Pitcher of the Year award and is 7-3 with a 2.88 ERA, two complete games and an opponent batting average of .183.

Steidl is hitting .306 with six homers and 30 RBI, Hodges, who has been injured and missed 12 games, is batting .131, Barquin is 3-3 on the mound and Perry is 0-0 with a 3.86 ERA in nine appearances.

Leinenbach is batting .268 for the Ospreys with three homers and 21 RBI and Boroski is 1-0 with a 3.98 ERA and 1.57 WHIP in 15 games.

“Those guys who stayed with us bleed green and gold,” Hayes said. “It’s easy for me to root for those guys. They’ve earned every opportunity they’re getting .”

Mercadante had similar feelings about Leinenbach and Boroski.

“Those two guys stayed here, bought into it and have worked extremely hard,” he said. “They’re giving us everything they’ve got.”

Blake DeLamielleure, Richard Long part of a ‘brotherhood’

Blake DeLamielleure didn’t hold any pity parties when he missed almost all of the 2024 season, a year after he led the Dolphins in hitting (.302), doubles (15), stolen bases (14 of 16) and added six homers and 40 RBI.

Instead, he completed his degree in finance, rehabbed and left no doubt he’d return.

“Not at all, when DeLamielleure was asked if it was a difficult decision. “This school always wanted me, and this is the place I wanted to be since I was a freshman in high school. I love Chris and I love this program.”

DeLamielleure said he’s not going to second-guess the decision his former teammates made in transferring but isn’t going to deny he wasn’t dismayed at their departure.

“Ultimately, it’s up to them,” he said. “You’re disappointed but yeah, it’s definitely their decision.”

Long said he had some inner turmoil about so many players on the pitching staff transferring. But he said his faith sustained him as he decided to return to JU.

“I battled that for a while,” he said. “I’m a big faith-based guy and I viewed it as more than baseball. The brothers I had here, the community, the education I’ve gotten … I couldn’t put a price value on leaving here.”

Long’s father Richard said some teams put out feelers for his son but in the end, the family viewed his senior season as a chance to finish a stellar career with the Dolphins.

“It’s a brotherhood on this team with the guys who stayed,” Long said. “They’re very high on faith and believe if you work hard and you can accomplish anything.”

A UNF family and small-town values

Clayton Boroski didn’t have difficulty maintaining his allegiance to UNF. His older sister graduated from the university and leaving school might have been the same as leaving his family.

Boroski, who is from St. Cloud, also said he made a commitment in high school to come to to UNF and never once considered not seeing that through

“I feel like if you made a decision out of high school to go to a program and play for four years, you should honor that,” he said.

Leinenbach is from Dunnellon and said the values he learned then kept him at UNF.

“I’m from a small town and I was taught to finish what you start,” he said.

Boroski and Leinenbach also faced a difficult situation after their sophomore seasons. Their coach, Tim Parenton, died of cancer. Other teammates such as Lodise (FSU), Aidan Sweatt (Liberty) and Austin Brinling (South Carolina) departed but both gave Mercadante a chance to sell his vision.

“Really it took just one phone call,” Leinenbach said. “He told me we were going to win the ASUN. I could tell in his voice that he truly believed it. He said he was going to get the guys in here to win it, so I believed it.”

Leinenbach admitted he almost entered the portal after Parenton died. But as with Boroski, he gave Mercadante a chance.

“Once they got here, they made me believe in them,” he said.

Clayton Boroski: ‘a dying breed’

Hardly anyone thinks the stream of mid-major players going to the SEC or ACC when they become stars will dwindle to a trickle anytime soon.

“We’re going to be a dying breed, for sure,” Boroski said of players who play all four years at the same mid-major school.

And what of the coaches? Hayes, Mercadante and other mid-major coaches didn’t sign up to develop talent for Florida or Florida State. There is chatter that future NIL agreements might require a major college to kick back a development fee of some kind to a player’s former school or, as Albany basketball coach Dwayne Killings has suggested, a model patterned after the NBA G League.

But for now it’s still the Wild, Wild West and mid-major coaches are spending time recruiting and developing players who may leave as soon as they show more skills.

Neither Hayes nor Mercadante are showing outward signs of being frustrated. Hayes said he builds loyalty by recruiting players as young as freshmen in high school and will develop them to the best of his and his staff’s ability and using the same guidelines.

“I hope guys continue to see and understand how special this environment is,” he said. “This is a relationship-based environment that believes in development, and every single guy that comes into this program gets better. And they get better because of the investment they have in them, physically, spiritually, emotionally. We’re going to earn [loyalty] and I’m not going to change how we’re going to do things.”

Mercadante said he’s not going to start recruiting players on the assumption he’s only getting a year or two out of them.

“I can’t get caught up too much thinking about the future,” he said. “We’re going to coach each team the best we can and make them understand why they came to UNF, that they’re cared about and we’re going to work for them every single day. You may need to have some tough conversations later [about players transferring] but I can’t coach thinking about that.”

In the meantime, the players say they will enjoy every moment they have left. Each team has nine conference games remaining and the ASUN Tournament will be May 20-25 in DeLand.

“It was worth staying,” Long said. “The brotherhood we have is inseparable and the relationships I’ve built at JU will last forever. That’s the most important thing to me.”

“We have a ton of baseball left,” said Leinenbach. “Three weeks, and maybe more. I’m not worried about anything except winning.”

How are JU, UNF transfers faring at new schools?

2025 statistics are for games played through May 1

Alex Lodise (UNF): Leading Florida State in most offensive categories and starting at shortstop. Lodise, a Bartram Trail graduate, is hitting .440 with 14 homers and 53 RBI.
Justin Nadeau (JU): Has played second base and outfield for the Florida Gators, hitting .293 with three homers and 18 RBI.
Peyton Prescott (JU): 3-0 record and 6.31 ERA in 18 games for Florida State.
Evan Chrest (JU): 2-1 with a 2.70 ERA in eight games for Florida State.
Isaac Williams (JU): 0-1 with an 8.00 ERA in 12 games for UCF.
Aidan Sweatt (UNF): Hit .274 with five homers and 39 RBI in 61 games for Liberty in 2024.
Austin Brinling (UNF): Hit .303 in 33 games for South Carolina in 2024.

Link

NIL

Georgia case could determine if schools can get damages from transfers

Published

4 minutes ago

December 25, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Are top-drawer college football teams and their name, image and likeness collectives simply trying to protect themselves from willy-nilly transfers or are they bullying players to stay put with threats of lawsuits?

Adding liquidated damage fee clauses to NIL contracts became all the rage in 2025, a year that will be remembered as the first time players have been paid directly by schools. But some experts say such fees cannot be used as a cudgel to punish players that break a contract and transfer.

It’s no surprise that the issue has resulted in a lawsuit — make that two lawsuits — before the calendar flipped to 2026.

Less than a month after Georgia filed a lawsuit against defensive end Damon Wilson II to obtain $390,000 in damages because he transferred to Missouri, Wilson went to court himself, claiming Georgia is misusing the liquidated damages clause to “punish Wilson for entering the portal.”

Wilson’s countersuit in Boone County, Mo., says he was among a small group of Bulldog stars pressured into signing the contract Dec. 21, 2024. The lawsuit also claims that Wilson was misused as an elite pass rusher, that the Georgia defensive scheme called for him to drop back into pass coverage. Wilson, who will be a senior next fall, led Missouri with nine sacks this season.

Georgia paid Wilson $30,000, the first monthly installment of his $500,000 NIL deal, before he entered the transfer portal on Jan. 6, four days after Georgia lost to Notre Dame in a College Football Playoffs quarterfinal.

Bulldogs brass was not pleased. Wilson alleges in his lawsuit that Georgia dragged its feet in putting his name in the portal and spread misinformation to other schools about him and his contractual obligations.

“When the University of Georgia Athletic Association enters binding agreements with student-athletes, we honor our commitments and expect student-athletes to do the same,” Georgia spokesperson Steven Drummond said in a statement after the school filed the lawsuit.

Wilson’s countersuit turned that comment on its head, claiming it injured his reputation because it implies he was dishonest. He is seeking unspecified damages in addition to not owing the Bulldogs anything. Georgia’s lawsuit asked that the dispute be resolved through arbitration.

A liquidated damage fee is a predetermined amount of money written into a contract that one party pays the other for specific breaches. The fee is intended to provide a fair estimate of anticipated losses when actual damages are difficult to calculate, and cannot be used to punish one party for breaking the contract.

Wilson’s case could have far-reaching implications because it is the first that could determine whether schools can enforce liquidated damage clauses. While it could be understandable that schools want to protect themselves from players transferring soon after receiving NIL money, legal experts say liquidated damage fees might not be the proper way to do so.

Link

NIL

Report shares why Penn State did not spend ‘a ton of time’ pursuing Kalen DeBoer, Mike Elko

Published

59 minutes ago

December 25, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Penn State‘s head coaching search may have taken longer than expected, but the Nittany Lions ultimately landed their guy — Matt Campbell from Iowa State. According to a recent report from ESPN, however, the search apparently featured a number of big-name college football candidates to replace James Franklin.

These names included Alabama‘s Kalen DeBoer, Notre Dame‘s Marcus Freeman and Texas A&M‘s Mike Elko. All surfaced as “potential candidates,” with Elko looked at as “the most realistic,” given his ties to the region.

“The whole time, we thought Elko was going to be the guy,” one SEC coach told ESPN. “Then he came off the board.”

Elko just finished an 11-2 season at Texas A&M, leading the Aggies to its first-ever College Football Playoff. His Aggies were undefeated for the first 13 weeks of the season while Penn State continued it’s head coaching search. Texas A&M went on to extend his on Nov. 15.

For DeBoer, he denied having interest in the Nittany Lions’ job. Freeman was in the middle of leading Notre Dame to a 10-game win streak to lose the season. According to another ESPN source, Penn State “never spent a ton of time on those guys knowing their current situations.”

It wasn’t until early December that Penn State announced the hire of former Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell. The hire appears to have been well-received on social media and recruits alike.

He’s bringing to Happy Valley a resume that includes a 107–70 overall as a head coach. He built the Iowa State program from the ground up after a successful stint as Toledo’s head coach. Starting with a 3-9 finish in his first year with the program, Campbell led the Cyclones to a program record five-straight bowl games.

In 2024, Iowa State had its best season yet under Campbell. Leading the Cyclones to an 11-3 record, they came up just short of the College Football Playoff after losing to Arizona State in the Big 12 Championship game. They were ranked as high as No. 9 in the AP Poll last season.

He is expected to mirror that success and then some as the Nittany Lions’ new head coach, all while competing alongside the DeBoer’s, Freeman’s and Elko’s at the forefront of college football. Campbell’s effort is already underway in Happy Valley, and the product of it will be seen next fall.

The first step — the NCAA transfer portal. Penn State was left with two signees in its 2025 recruiting class, so he’ll be focused on bolstering his roster once it opens on Jan. 2.

Link

NIL

South Carolina EDGE Taeshawn Alston plans to enter NCAA Transfer Portal

Published

2 hours ago

December 25, 2025

Your Sports Nation

South Carolina freshman EDGE rusher Taeshawn Alston plans to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal, On3’s Pete Nakos reports. Alston did not see any game action this season and redshirted.

The news of Alston’s transfer comes one day after it was revealed that All-SEC EDGE rusher Dylan Stewart would be returning to Columbia next season. The projected future top-ten NFL Draft pick signed a new rev share/NIL agreement with the school and announced his return on Instagram Tuesday.

Prior to enrolling at South Carolina, Alston was ranked as a three-star prospect and the No. 674 overall player in the 2025 class, according to the On3 Consensus. He was the No. 65-ranked EDGE rusher in his class and the No. 16 overall player from the state of North Carolina, hailing from Vance County.

Alston chose South Carolina over programs such as Colorado, West Virginia, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and North Carolina coming out of high school. Alston’s secondary recruiter, defensive line coach Sterling Lucas, was poached by Lane Kiffin and LSU this offseason.

This past season was extremely disappointing for South Carolina, which opened the season ranked No. 13 in the Preseason AP Poll. The Gamecocks kicked off their season with back-to-back wins, but went just 2-8 over their remaining 10 games to finish with a 4-8 record.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire.

The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

Link

NIL

VIDEO: Cantwell goes one-on-one to talk navigating football & NIL

Published

3 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Part 1:

Part 2:

Nixa’s Jackson Cantwell made the transition from tight end to the offensive tackle and quickly realized that his talents would take him far. He racked up accolades like Gatorade’s National Player of the Year and No. 1 college football recruit in the 2026 class.

As a high school junior, he came to realize that his top-tier college recruiting brings NIL into the picture.

Cantwell and KY3’s Danielle King sat one-on-one to discuss how he navigated NIL, from hiring sports agent Drew Rosenhaus to enjoying the food that comes with brand deals.

Rosenhaus, one of the leading NFL representatives, also chatted with King about representing Cantwell, the young NIL landscape and more.

Link

NIL

Coveted dual-threat quarterback entering college football transfer portal

Published

4 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Your Sports Nation

The college football transfer portal is only ten days away from officially opening for business. That hasn’t stopped players around the country from getting a head start on the action, as nearly 1,100 names are expected to transfer.

That number will continue to rise over the next few weeks. The movement could be unprecedented this offseason, as the spring window has been eliminated, meaning there will be only 15 days for players to appear in the portal.

The quarterback market is packed. Though the group might not be as top-heavy as the last few seasons, there will still be plenty of talented signal-callers available.

Former Freshman Of The Year Transferring From Arkansas State

On Tuesday evening, Arkansas State junior quarterback Jaylen Raynor revealed his intentions to transfer, per 247Sports’ Matt Zenitz.

Raynor spent the last three seasons as the starter for the Red Wolves. In 2025, he completed 333/501 passes for 3,361 yards with 19 touchdowns to 11 interceptions. He added 154 rushes for 423 yards and 7 more scores.

Raynor led the Sun Belt Conference in completions, attempts, yards, and interceptions.

Arkansas State finished 7-6, defeating Missouri State, 34-28, in the Xbox Bowl.

Raynor signed with the Red Wolves as a two-star prospect in the 2023 class. He leaped into the starting role early in his true freshman season, taking the reins for the final 10 games of the year.

Raynor was named the Sun Belt’s Freshman of the Year after completing 166/285 passes for 2,550 yards with 17 touchdowns to 7 interceptions. He rushed for 5 more scores.

The North Carolina native tied Arkansas State’s program record with six touchdown passes against UMass on September 30, 2023.

Raynor continued to lead the Red Wolves as a sophomore. In 2024, Arkansas State went 8-5 and defeated Bowling Green in the 68 Ventures Bowl.

Overall, Raynor is 20-16 as a starting quarterback and he’s 2-1 in bowl games.

During his college career, he’s completed 758 of 1,206 passes for 8,694 yards with 52 touchdowns and 28 interceptions. Raynor has rushed 414 times for 1,183 yards and 15 more scores.

The 6-foot-0, 202-pound quarterback has two years to play one at the college level.

Out of high school, Raynor held offers from programs such as UMass, Miami (OH), Army, Air Force, and Navy.

Two things about NIL and Brohm

Published

5 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Your Sports Nation

1. The latest actual numbers I can find…per 247 sports, U of L was 20th in NIL monies in college sports at about 450 million. Now we are approaching 2026 and things obviously have changed, but we were at least trying to play the NIL game.

2. Jeff did not leave Purdue the first time because the timing wasn’t right or he still had a job to do with the Boilermakers. I respected Jeff for that and quite frankly made me feel more proud of who he was as a person .

I could be naive and stupid but:

A. This crazy money by rich people to pay athletes is just that, crazy and not sustainable long term.

B. U of L is probably doing the best it can but can not compete against oil monies etc.

C. Love him or not, (I love Jeff as our coach) he is the best we could have and feel safe he wants to stay. (Is this a dumb statement given the leaving fears?)

D. Let’s keep winning at Jeff’s level or better

Link