Mack Brown encouraged a recruit to commit to another school for the NIL money: 'You ought to take it'

The NIL is changing everything in the world of college football recruiting. The money being thrown around is life-changing, the promises are big, and the unknowns are plenty.

Imagine being a high school senior and being offered more than what most people make in a few years to commit to a college football program. 

It has to be incredibly exciting but also incredibly stressful.

That leaves plenty of room for shade, and college football has unfortunately never been above operating in the gray zone when it comes to recruiting.  Recruiting has always been a high-stakes game and underhandedness can prevail in such a "win or go home' environment. 

That's why it's good to see that not everyone is folding under the pressure of the new world of NIL. There's still actual coaching going on -- not just recruiting  -- and the betterment of the player as a person and a student (gasp) still seems to be at the forefront of some people's minds.

It's refreshing to see that some coaches, like North Carolina's Mack Brown, are truly looking out for the players that they're trying to recruit. That is, of course, if you believe Brown's retelling of a recruiting tale on The George Plaster Show (transcribed by 247sports).

“There are so many rumors out there, just like with NIL,” Brown said. “Are these kids making as much as they say they are? Some of them aren’t. I had a guy sitting in my office and say, ‘Coach, I’ve been offered $350,000.’ He was a recruit. I thought he was an OK player. He said, ‘I’ve been offered $350,000 to take it.’ I held up my phone and said, ‘Let’s call them now, man. You ought to take it. You need to take it before you get out of this office. I’d hold them to that if they offered you that much.’”

There are probably fans that would chastise Brown for letting a player go to a different school without putting up a fight. That amount of money can literally be life-changing for a recruit and his family, though, and if Brown knew that North Carolina had no intention of matching that kind of financial offer, good on him for looking out for the wellbeing of the player.

Money is always going to talk loudest, and that's the tricky part of NIL. Programs can now essentially buy themselves a top recruiting class, no matter if said program or school is actually a good fit for the recruits or not. With that in mind, perhaps coaches and schools that don't try to consistently up the ante regarding NIL will eventually fall to the wayside, but one also imagines that a coach's reputation for doing the right thing and looking out for his players still plays well on the recruiting trail -- especially in living rooms with parents.