Diego Mendoza-Moyers: In a new era of college athletics, where athletes at powerhouse programs are staring at bigger paydays – and higher expectations – than ever before, El Paso has its own star. 

Jake Fette is a senior quarterback at Del Valle High School who has committed to play at Arizona State University in Phoenix (Tempe). He’s considered among the absolute best quarterbacks in the country at his age.

The city’s biggest high school football star illustrates how the path for big-time athletes has changed in the college NIL era – with athletes now compensated for their name, image and likeness. Gone are the days of broke college athletes, when receiving a university scholarship was considered adequate compensation for an athlete.

And while a more regulated system may be on the horizon, the NIL era has created what some have called a wild, wild west in recent years, with collegiate athletes hiring agents and jumping from school to school to chase a pay day while they can.

But, Fette is a little different. Even as his profile on the national recruiting stage has grown over the last year, he’s remained committed to Arizona State, and has tried to strike a balance between landing in a good situation, and also securing compensation commensurate with his skills. And Fette isn’t the only high-level Division 1 prospect in El Paso walking this path.

El Paso Matters assistant editor and reporter Pablo Villa published a story this week about Fette’s recruitment journey amid a new, moneyed landscape in college sports. 

And in a moment, we’ll welcome Pablo to the El Paso Matters Podcast to talk about his coverage of Fette’s journey, and the broader shift that El Paso high school athletes are having to navigate.

But, before we start: This El Paso Matters Podcast episode is sponsored by Tawney, Acosta and Chaparro: Truck Crash and Injury Attorneys. Their team of local, seasoned trial attorneys are ready to help if you’ve been injured in a crash.  

Pablo, thanks for joining me. 

Pablo: Always a pleasure, Diego. Thank you for having me.

Diego: So, Pablo, how good is Jake Fette? Are we witnessing the best high school football player in El Paso’s history?

Pablo: Man, you come out swinging with that question. This is the kind of question that can start fights at Thanksgiving dinner, right? I’ll address the second part of your question first. 

I mean, is he the best high school football player in El Paso’s history? I mean, you can make the argument that guys like Andre Jones, who played at Andress, who was, I think, one of three Parade All-Americans that El Paso has ever had, maybe he was the best ever. I mean, there’s certainly been a lot of talented guys. And even guys who are 5-foot nothing, 100-and-nothing (pounds) who have put forth these Lilliputian efforts, right, and had spectacular seasons who arguably are great players, too. So, it’s just going to depend on who you are and where you’re from and what kind of mood you’re in that particular day, right? 

But in terms of Jake Fette, I mean, he’s a spectacular talent, right? He’s not just physically gifted, he’s mentally sharp, he’s grounded. As we speak, he’s competing in the Elite 11 finals in Los Angeles. He’s the first player from El Paso to ever participate in that. Another Del Valle alum, Steven Montez, made it to the regional round of the Elite 11, but he never advanced to the finals. 

So, this is something that Jake Fette is sort of pioneering for El Paso athletes, right? He’s currently ranked as the number four quarterback in the nation, which alone puts him in historic territory, right? I mentioned Steven Montez, and I spoke with him as part of this story, and he played at Colorado and he played in the NFL, right, with the Washington Football Team they were called at the time. Montez said that Jake’s accuracy at age 16-17 surpasses what he himself had at 18, right, as a senior at Del Valle. 

So, you combine that with what everybody says about Jake Fette’s leadership, his work ethic and the respect he commands in the locker room, and you start to understand why coaches and scouts are calling him one of the best to ever come out of the borderland.

Diego: How big of a deal is it that he committed to Arizona State?

Pablo: So, I think it’s always spectacular when a player from El Paso gets the opportunity to play at a Division 1 school, and in this case, it’s one of the Power Four schools, right? I think it’s just really awesome that El Paso players are getting to represent our region on those big stages, right? And he’s not the first. I mean, there’s been plenty that have come before him that have done this. I think he just comes with a lot of ballyhoo and a lot of high expectations. And those are things that I know that he’s aware of. I know his coaching coaches are aware of, and I know he’s going to work really hard to represent Arizona State really well. 

The other thing to consider here is that he still has a whole senior year to go through. I mean, I know he’s really focused on that and just, right now, the only thing he’s really focused on is making sure that Del Valle football gets to repeat as district champion.

Diego: Yeah. And, so, we know Fette’s ascendance, right – as you said, he’s still entering his senior year, but he committed to Arizona State at the beginning of his junior year – but his ascendance onto the national stage seems really to have started with a chance encounter with Texas Tech scouts, right?

Pablo: Yeah, that’s right. So, in the spring of his sophomore year, it was actually January of last year, of 2024. Texas Tech coaches, they came to visit El Paso as coaches from all kinds of schools often do. They’re just kind of, just visiting schools, talking to coaches, trying to gauge the level of talent that exists so that they might be able to go back to wherever they’re from, to report back on some of the targets they might start to try to hone in on for their programs in the future years. 

And, so, coach Rudy Contreras, head coach out at Del Valle, had a conversation with these coaches, one of them in particular. And he was telling him, ‘Hey, I’ve got this guy you might want to come look at.’ And the guy he was talking about was Jake Fette, right. And the coaches were heading out. They were going to catch a flight out of the El Paso airport. And, so, it kind of ended there, right? The conversation ended there. 

Give it a little time, a half-hour later, the coaches call back and say “‘Hey our flight got cancelled or delayed. Is it cool if we come visit the Del Valle campus to check your guy out?’” And coach, of course, says “Yeah, come on down,” and rolled out the red carpet for them, and had them go out and watch Jake throw a few passes out during a workout right there at the stadium. 

They were impressed, and I think the really unique thing about this story, which it is in the story that was published on our website, is that one of the coaches just took out his phone and started recording Jake = Fette as he went through the route tree progressions and all the things he does as part of a workout. And he started facetiming with the more senior coaches back in Lubbock. And they’re just – it’s amazing, right? They’re just watching this through a phone. You’ve got to question the quality of that phone. It must have been an impressive phone to be able to record these clear images. 

But, it was really just based on that one workout, and over a phone, that the coaching staff at Texas Tech decided to offer him on the spot, right? So it’s just kind of cool to think of this, like you mentioned, it was a chance encounter. If that flight left El Paso on time, or didn’t didn’t experience any problems, we might not even be having this conversation, right? So it is just cool how sometimes luck is just sort of when opportunity meets preparation, right? And, so, that’s kind of what happened here and that’s kind of what touched off all this national recruiting whirlwind.

Diego: Yeah. So he got an offer in his sophomore year of high school. So, that’s pretty impressive. 

One thing I thought that was really interesting in your story was you, you use the word “brand” and “branding” a few times to refer to the image players have to cultivate even as, you know, freshman or sophomores in high school. Can you expand on what you mean by branding and talk about how players want potential college recruiters to perceive them in this NIL era?

Pablo: So, I think branding, in this context, it’s not just talking about social media following and those kinds of things. I mean, it’s about how a student athlete presents themselves publicly, and privately to an extent, and how consistent they are on the field, and whether they carry the kind of professionalism that college programs want to invest in.

I think in the NIL era, schools, they’re effectively making business decisions, right, when they recruit. They’re asking, ‘Is this a player who can represent our program? Is he coachable? Is he marketable? Is he mature? And Fette’s coaches and his dad, who is an assistant coach at Del Valle, and who I also talked to as part of this story. They’ve talked about how, Jake, he’s been mindful of that, that from really early on and he’s not someone who chases attention, but rather he kind of just stays focused on the task at hand, right, and keeps the focus on his team and as well as the things he’s supposed to do as as a high school student. 

That’s part of what makes his brand so appealing. Right. I do think, though,  that branding has sort of been part of what a player has to do. Even before NIL existed – I mentioned I talked to Steven Montez, the former Del Valle quarterback who played at Colorado – and he talked to me about “I had to start a Twitter account, and I had to. I had to put things out on Twitter and share links to my highlights,” and that kind of thing. And predating that, all the players who have come out of El Paso who played for big-time programs, they’ve had to do things of that nature to sort of get exposure for themselves. But they did it in different ways, right? 

And I know one of the things you might want to talk about as we progress through this podcast is talking about Ed Stansbury, a former Irvin High School great, who ended up playing at UCLA and played in the NFL for a bit. He did it a little differently, too, right? But he had to maintain a brand as well, but he didn’t have the things that we have today, right? 

He didn’t have the modern day tools like Twitter, Hudl reels, that kind of thing. His coach helped him do it a little differently. And I know, I know, we’ll talk about that a little later, but I think that’s what branding is here. It’s just a way of showcasing not just your athletic talent, but the kind of person you are, and to make yourself more marketable to universities.

Diego: You have to have – or at least exhibit – a high level of maturity these days to maybe get a big offer?

Pablo: It helps, and I mean, I think that’s probably been true forever. I mean, I mean if you think of old school coaches, like a coach Paul Bryant of Alabama or those guys, they always expected you to conduct yourself like a gentleman, right? With your “yes, sirs” and “no sirs” and all those kinds of things that I think just someone who is well-mannered and eloquent and all those things has always been someone who people want to deal with a lot more than people who aren’t those things, who don’t have those attributes, right? 

So, I think, in a sense, marketability of an athlete has always been a thing. It’s evolved over the years and certainly some of the athletes. They have the day, the things they have to do to maintain that brand. I mean, it can be kind of daunting, right? So, in a sense, I don’t know that it’s gotten easier. I think in some ways it’s probably gotten harder but, but Jake Fette is someone who is exhibiting all those positive attributes and doing it in a real good way, in a real mature way. And that’s why I think he’s in this position. 

Diego: Yeah. And you mentioned you spoke to Jake’s father, Rick, who played at UTEP. And Rick Fette had a quote to you where he said “There’s two ways we could probably do it right now,” referring to his son’s recruitment process. And he said, “You can go get an agent and have that agent go to work for you and shop you around to the highest bidder … or you go where you want to go.” He also said the players these days have to quote “show proof of value”. And, so, I’m curious, what did you make of those comments? And just curious what you can tell us about the recruitment process for a star player now in 2025 versus 10 or 15 or even 25 years ago when you were playing at Montwood High School?

Pablo: Ha, you threw the Montwood High School thing in there. Yeah, I did play there and I’m very proud to be a Ram, so I’ll say that first.

But, so, I think what coach Rick Fette, I think what his comments really cut, they really cut to the heart of how recruiting has changed a little bit, right? Twenty years ago, even five years ago, Diego, honestly a kid’s value was mostly determined by film, in-person visits, that kind of thing. 

Now, in this NIL era, which has only been around for less than five years – it started in 2021 – schools are investing real dollars, right? Real dollars, and they want evidence that the player, the student-athlete, is going to deliver for them. So, I think proof of value, it means performance, it means character and it’s how well a player fits into a broader program strategy, right? So, I think the biggest change is that recruiting, it’s not just a football decision anymore, it’s a financial one. 

And, so, Jake and his family, they’ve taken a measured approach through this, and they’ve emphasized education and fit over chasing the highest bidder, which I think is pretty admirable. And I think there’s things – and I know we’re going to get into this a little later – there are things that sort of limit what they can do now anyway, just because of UIL rules, Texas education code rules, those kinds of things. So, they’re not exactly able to partake in these things where they would be able to chase the highest bidders anyway. I don’t think that’s something they’re interested in. 

I just mention that as something that they have to contend with as well. It’s sort of something that makes the NIL picture a lot more muddled, and I know there are efforts currently underway, and things that have happened very recently that are helping to sort of clear that picture.

Diego: Yeah. So, maybe not high school athletes, but – obviously the dollars are out there, right, if you’re a high-level recruit? And, so, even college athletes themselves are hiring agents, right? And sort of going to programs and saying, hey, how much can you offer? That’s what’s been going on in recent years, right?

Pablo: Right. That’s right. And, I mean, the numbers vary widely. There are all kinds of stories and things out there that, quite frankly, a lot of it is speculation and some of those reports are grounded in true things. But it’s really tough to get your arms around, right? Because, I mean, as I mentioned, there’s things in Texas that sort of limit what the Fettes can do. 

That being said, there are 49 other states in this country, and all of them approach this differently, right? And, so, it’s really hard to, like, emphatically say that someone is making X amount. Because the truth is, I don’t think we all really know. I mean, we can guess and there are some deals that have been very generous, but I don’t know that we’d be able to put a number on what any of these players are actually making.

Diego: Yeah. And I guess, just to kind of touch on that one more time, I mean, you put in your story – and, again, there’s obviously a lack of clarity around what the student athlete compensation really is, right? But there are some estimates that the current ASU quarterback, his NIL deal is valued at $3 million right? And, again, maybe there’s some uncertainty in that, but I just wonder if you can give us a sense of sort of, is that common? Are college athletes, the majority of them out there, making six and seven figures? Or is that sort of – just a select few? And I also wonder, I mean ASU really, they went beyond expectations this past year. So, that also has to affect your compensation too, right, as a player?

Pablo: That’s right. So, the majority of players aren’t making those large amounts of money, right? I think you do have some guys, like an Arch Manning at Texas or a Carson Beck at Miami, who command a little more attention just because of their skill set. I mean, they do have deals that are reportedly worth multiple millions of dollars, right? But those deals are rare.  I think most players get NIL earnings in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. 

The top quarterbacks at Power 4 schools, they can be maybe in the seven-figure range, barely touching that – high six-figures, that kind of thing. But those numbers, they’re not the norm. And what’s new is that schools, not just third-party boosters, they’ll likely have a formal role in direct compensation going forward, right? So, you know I talked about Jake Fette and some of the things he has to deal with now. So, right now that he’s still in high school, right, he’s a senior-to-be at Del Valle under UIL rules and under Texas Education Code, he’s not permitted to receive compensation. He’s not permitted to sign an NIL deal. He’s not permitted to enter into any agreement related to NIL until he’s officially enrolled in college, right? So, even things like promised future payments or representation arrangements from an agent or or things like that, those are things that could render him ineligible. And his team could be subject to whatever disciplinary action, forfeits, that kind of thing. 

So, maintaining that amateurism is still something that he has to do through the end of his high school career, which will be later in the fall. Once he enrolls at Arizona State, presuming that that’s where we’re headed, then the NIL deal is going to be legal and it’s going to be structured, right? Upon his enrollment at ASU, Jake will be eligible to participate in NIL deals under NCAA and the state specific-rules. Arizona has its own laws. I’m not an expert in them. But I know that, right now, Jake and his family, they’re doing their preliminary work to learn everything they need to learn about all this. 

And as you mentioned or as you alluded to, they’re considering two routes, two pathways to NIL. And one is the agent route, where an agent will shop Jake around for the most lucrative deal. That’s an approach that a lot of – or that a fair amount of players are taking right now. I mean, you have your stories like your Nico Iamalaeva from Tennessee, who had a great year at Tennessee last year, took them to the (College Football Playoff), had no danger of losing his starting spot and left, right? Took off, and landed at UCLA, eventually. But he did it for the dollar, right? Or at least, reportedly, he did it for the dollar, and that’s a route that players can take in this new environment that we have. 

The other route is just going the relationship route. And that’s where you just go where you want to go, because that’s where you actually want to play. You like what you hear. You like the program. You like the players that are within it and you just believe in what they’re doing, right? And, so, that’s sort of the route that Jake is taking, is seemingly taking. He’s going to honor his verbal commitment to Arizona State, which he made last September. 

By all accounts, his family prefers this. They want to focus on education and trust over those top-dollar offers. So, that’s where we are right now, right? I think Jake’s NIL mindset is that he and his family, they emphasize education, they emphasize loyalty and development, right? Over chasing the highest bidder.

And, honestly, I think part of it is they want to sort of put this conversation to bed, so that Jake can just focus on his senior year of high school and enjoy it and just have the decision part behind it. Because – and he shared some of this with me – but it must be exhausting. In some ways, you think “Man, I’m a top-flight recruit. Like, I’d have a cush life when I’m in high school,” right? But, you do have to consider that these coaches are haranguing you day and night. They’re texting you while you’re trying to be in class or before you even go to school. They keep you up late at night because they’re trying to call you, trying to maintain contact with you, asking you, “What can we do to make you come to this school?” I mean, that can be exhausting, man, when you’re just trying to be a high school kid. You think back to when you were at Franklin, and just trying to enjoy and plan your weekend and those kinds of things. Those are things you can’t do when, or at least you can’t do them effectively, or you don’t have a lot of time for them when you’re just having to have all these other conversations. 

So, I think it was important for Jake and his family to just make a decision, and they happen to like what ASU – the way they run their program, they happen to like the coaching staff and they think he’ll have a real shot at seeing the field there, or at least to compete for a spot, fairly, to see the field there. And I think they were happy with what they did, and I’m not sure that they’re going to – that there’s any way that they’re going to get out of this. 

Diego: And I’m curious if you could touch on sort of the recruitment process for other high school stars in El Paso. I mentioned Jake Fette isn’t the only high-level Division 1 recruit or prospect in town. 

We know about standouts such as Daveon Singleton at Chapin, and Ernie Powers at Franklin, who have committed to play at UTEP, and offensive lineman Justin Morales, who’s also at Franklin, is set to play at Kansas State. And then running back Ryan Estrada over at El Dorado is also a D1 prospect. And, so, I’m just curious if you can sort of just touch on maybe how their recruiting journeys might differ from a really high-level national recruit like Fette, right? They’re high-level players in their own right. But just curious what that sort of looks like maybe in comparison to this big national recruitment search for Fette, right?

Pablo: So, it’s a great year for El Paso talent, right? It’s one of the strongest in recent memory with regard to the young men that you mentioned. I think, for the most part, I’m not sure that the actual recruiting process is much different. All of these guys, they still have to engage in all that grueling physical preparation. They’ve got to lift weights, they’ve got to run, they’ve got to work out and they’ve got to do all the things they need to do in the classroom, too, right? To make sure that they can perform on the field, and they still have to do all the same things that Jake Fette does right, with regard to the coaches that are courting them for their services in college. They’ve still got to deal with the phone calls, the text messages, they’ve still got to respond to the social media messages, the DMs, whatever, all those things, right? 

So, for all these guys, like, in that sense, I think the process is still competitive. It’s very similar. When you’re playing ball, I think whether you’re a lineman, quarterback, skill position, whatever. I mean, you still have to do all these things to prepare yourself. And if attention does come to you, I think it’s the same whether you’re being recruited by Arizona State or by Blinn College, right? 

I think the conversations are very similar. The way you go through them is very similar. So, in that sense, I don’t know that things are much different for these other guys you mentioned. What might be slightly different is sort of the scale of the actual exposure, right? Players like Jake Fette who drew these upper-echelon talent rankings — and who is at the Elite 11, right? I mean, those things, they come with a little additional attention, they maybe bring potentially bigger NIL stakes, right? But, again, like, I don’t know that other players – the media conversations they have, the NIL conversations they have, they might be a little more modest, but they’re still the same thing. You’re still going through the same thing. I think Jake would be able to relate to any player who’s going through these things, that they’re very similar. 

That being said, I think it’s exciting that the landscape is changing for all these recruits. Branding, performance, composure, those things matter a lot more now than they ever did, right? Even at schools that are outside the Power Four. 

Diego: Yeah. And just last question here, Pablo. You mentioned here and in your story about past athletes in El Paso who have gone on to play Division 1 schools, like Ed Stansbury, who played at Irvin and went to go play at UCLA in the late 90s. Steven Montez, who was also a starter at Del Valle and then became a multi-year starter at Colorado about a decade ago, before a stint in the NFL. And before that, when I was younger, I remember John Skelton from Burges going to play for the Arizona Cardinals. And, of course, we all know about Aaron Jones, who played at UTEP and is still starring in the NFL. But, at the time, it kind of felt like those guys were the exception. And, so, I just wonder if you think it’s fair to say that there are more El Paso athletes going on to play at prominent Division 1 colleges in recent years? And do you think we could see that continue?

Pablo: So, this is an interesting question. I think there’s probably slightly more players that are getting to go to Power Four schools or Division 1 schools nowadays than there were in the past. But that’s not to say that El Paso was lacking in talent in years prior.

I think we talked about this a little bit before we started recording. If you think back 20, 30 years, before the advent of social media and those things, the only way you’re going to know about an El Paso kid is if you actually come down here. And back in those days, coaches from colleges, they would arrange trips and they would look for efficiencies within their recruiting trips, right? 

So, if you can go to an area like Dallas, you can hit Fort Worth. You can even take a drive down to Austin, maybe even San Antonio. And you can do that all in a matter of days, right? And see a bunch of kids and all those kinds of things. Similarly, if you go to some big metro areas in Georgia or Florida or California, you can get a lot out of those trips because you can see all these kids in close proximity, relatively close proximity to each other. 

So, when you think about El Paso, just geographically, we are isolated. I mean, this is a thing you hear and not just with regard to football, but with all kinds of things, right? And that isolation really limited the willingness of coaching staffs to take the trip down here, because from here, I mean, it’s 10 hours to Dallas, it’s four hours to Albuquerque, six (hours) to Phoenix. All that kind of thing just costs money, right? And it’s tough to figure that into your travel budget. And, I think, because of that, I really do think – I believe that a lot of colleges missed out on recruiting really special players from here. 

It took someone really special or it took some really big efforts from coaches to make those things happen for their players. You mentioned Ed Stansbury, and one of my favorite stories that he shared with me was just the fact that he came up in the mid 90s, right? There was no Google, there was no Twitter, there was no Facebook. There was no Hudl, no Max Preps, nothing like that, right? That didn’t exist back then. 

So, Ed got exposure because his coach, Tony Shaw – who was one of the best coaches in the region, very celebrated coach out of Irvin High School, who has guys who coached with him, who are still coaching today – but Tony Shaw saw something special in Ed, and he went through the pains himself to sit in that film room with VHS tapes, right? And splice them together to send out to schools, because he really felt Ed was a special talent. And that came to fruition for Ed, right? I mean, he ended up playing at UCLA, but he had offers from really big schools: Texas, he had Syracuse, programs like that – really, really top-flight programs. And he got his opportunity because his coach went to those lengths, right? It’s not because anyone came down here and spotted him. 

So, yeah, I do think it’s fair to say that there are more Division 1 athletes getting recruited out of El Paso in all sports, not just football. That’s not to say that the talent didn’t exist here before. I just think there are so many more avenues to expose these kids to the rest of the world, and they’re finally starting to gain a lot of attention, you know? So, that’s been fun to watch and hopefully it continues into the future. 

Diego: Yeah. And we can’t forget to mention Tristen Newton, who was on the national championship (University of Connecticut) as well. And a lot of El Paso athletes are doing great things on the national stage. 

And then, of course, this fall, we’ll be really curious to see how Jake Fette’s senior season goes and just the kind of season he can put together at Del Valle. And, even as a Westside guy, I might have to get out there for a game on a Friday this fall. So, we’ll see. 

But anyways, we’ll leave it there. Pablo. Always good to chat with you about El Paso athletics, and we’ll maybe have you come on to talk about Fette’s season later this year.

Pablo: Yeah. Appreciate the opportunity Diego. And, just for kicks, Del Valle does open the season at my alma mater, they’ll be traveling to Montwood. So, that’ll be an interesting game.

Diego: For sure. Alright, talk to you soon, Pablo.