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A federal district judge this week advanced significant parts of quarterback Jaden Rashada’s fraud lawsuitagainst University of Florida head football coach Billy Napier, wealthy UF booster Hugh Hathcock and other UF-connected persons over allegedly reneging on a $13.85 million deal and causing Rashada to forfeit a $9.5 million deal to play at the University of Miami.
A case that could reveal a disturbing underbelly of NIL collectives has thus advanced to pretrial discovery. That means Florida coaches, athletics staff and boosters will be forced to provide sworn testimony and share sensitive emails, texts and other materials. The NCAA will surely monitor for possible evidence of rule violations.
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While cautioning that Rashada still needs to prove his claims, U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers deemed Rashada’s complaint to have plausibly depicted the exploitation of a young person who was deciding on where to go to college.
“The broader context,” Rodgers stressed, “suggests that Defendants intended to string Rashada along without payment in order to deny Miami and other rival schools the prestige of signing a highly touted quarterback as well as, for some period of time, Rashada’s talents on the gridiron.”
Further, the judge bluntly wrote, “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how a purportedly fraudulent NIL deal initially valued north of $13 million could induce a teenager to choose a university he otherwise would not have.”
Rashada, 21, was a five-star recruit who graduated from Pittsburg (Calif.) High School in 2022. Major programs, including the Gators, sought to land his commitment.
Rashada and his family visited UF in June 2022. During the visit he met with UF’s NIL director, Marcus Castro-Walker, allegedly at the behest of Napier. Castro-Walker allegedly told Rashada’s father that Hathcock was on campus that day “for a photoshoot with his Lamborghini” and that he wanted to meet with Rashada. During a meeting, Hathcock allegedly told Castro-Walker that he would make sure Rashada was offered enough NIL money to commit to UF and that he could get help get Rashada’s dad a job, too.
Soon thereafter Hathcock allegedly offered Rashada $11 million in a deal to be funded by Velocity, Hathcock’s automobile company, and the Gator Guard collective, which Hathcock controlled. Yet Rashada had already made a verbal commitment to play for Miami, which, through a school-connected collective, had offered him $9.5 million.
UF nonetheless kept recruiting Rashada, and in November 2022, the defendants allegedly offered him a four-year, $13.85 million deal that would be paid by Velocity and Gator Guard. Hathcock, according to Rashada, gave the impression that Castro-Walker could negotiate this NIL deal.
As an important legal point, the $13.85 million offer may have been labeled “NIL” but it appears more accurately understood as a pay-for-play deal, which NCAA rules prohibit. NIL deals are college sports’ nomenclature for what would be called endorsement deals or influencing deals in pro sports and in entertainment. NIL deals are supposed to involve the commercial use of an athlete’s identifying traits—such as the athlete’s name or image—consistent with the right of publicity, which forbids the commercial use of another person’s identity without their consent. In contrast, a payment to an athlete to attend and play sports at a college is payment for university matriculation and athletic performance.
Rodgers noted how Hathcock used social media to promote an imminent signing for UF. In one tweet from November 2022, Hathcock wrote, “Tomorrow will be a Great Day Gator Fans!!!!”
The offer to Rashada soon changed, however, so that funds would “pass through” a different UF-affiliated collective, the Gator Collective—“even though,” Rodgers wrote, “the money would still come from Hathcock and Velocity.”
The negotiations allegedly included communications between Rashada’s agent and an attorney for Gator Collective about the wiring and timing of payments. On Nov. 10, 2022, Rashada publicly announced he had switched his commitment to UF, and he signed the $13.85 million deal with Gator Collective.
The deal included a $500,000 signing bonus to be paid on Dec. 5, 2022, but no payment was made that day. On Dec. 6, 2022, Gator Collective allegedly sent Rashada a letter “purporting to terminate” the deal. That letter, Rashada says, was followed by Castro-Walker telling his agent the deal would still happen, except it would be “assigned” to Gator Guard and would contain Hathcock’s personal guarantee. On Dec. 9, 2022, Velocity’s CEO wired Rashada $150,000 on Hathcock’s behalf.
But by National Signing Day on Dec. 21, 2022—the day when recruits accept athletic scholarships and sign letters of intent—Rashada was still waiting for the remaining $350,000. Napier is described as urging Rashada to sign his letter of intent and assuring Rashada that Hathcock was good for the money. Rashada signed, and despite repeated assurances money was on the way, he didn’t get paid. Rashada withdrew his letter of intent in January 2023. He played at Arizona State that year, was on the University of Georgia’s roster in 2024 and is currently in the transfer portal.
The defendants insist they haven’t broken any laws, and dispute Rashada’s retelling of history. Castro-Walker, for example, has argued Rashada has merely offered a “juicy bestseller in the fiction genre.” Rashada is also depicted as misconstruing the puffery and optimistic talk of the college football recruiting process for legally enforceable promises.
The judge sees the situation differently: Rashada has adequately pleaded claims for misrepresentation, fraudulently inducement, aiding and abetting fraud, and negligent misrepresentation. She underscored how the defendants allegedly “made repeated promises of a top-dollar NIL deal so that he would flip his commitment to UF, but they never actually intended to pay him full freight.” In addition, Rashada contends the defendants “orchestrated the scheme to ‘secure a star quarterback for a bargain,’ and to deprive UF’s rival schools, namely Miami, of the same.”
That argument, Rodgers explained, captures the necessary legal elements to win the claims.
Rodgers also drew attention to Rashada’s detailed description of a plot to bamboozle and dupe a recruit. This theory of fraud includes an alleged “myriad of mutually reinforcing, interlocking actions and statements by Napier, Castro-Walker and Hathcock over the course of Rashada’s ill-fated UF recruitment . . . Napier allegedly deputized Castro-Walker to lead UF’s NIL efforts and authorized Hathcock (and his Lamborghini) to meet with recruits and arrange NIL deals to secure commitments to UF.”
The judge further underscored the QB positing “an NIL scheme in which Defendants baited Rashada to flip his commitment to UF with the prospect of lucrative NIL payments—only to switch the terms of the deal after key recruiting milestones had passed—with the intention of securing a blue-chip recruit on the cheap and depriving UF’s rivals of Rashada’s athletic prowess.”
On the other hand, Rodgers dismissed Rashada’s claim of civil conspiracy. She explained “there is no allegation that Defendants joined together to blacklist or boycott Rashada.”
Rodgers also dismissed Rashada’s claim of tortious interference and his claim for aiding and abetting tortious interference. She noted a lack of case precedent to support the “somewhat novel question” of whether Rashada can sue the UF defendants when he was the one who allegedly withdrew from a deal with Miami “to pursue an NIL deal” that would have made him “$4 million richer.”
Although Rodgers’ ruling reduces the scope of Rashada’s lawsuit, the case is greenlighted to pretrial discovery. The development could increase the incentive for the defendants to offer Rashada financial terms that would make an out-of-court settlement attractive. Keep in mind, the NCAA could rely on litigation developments to support punishing a school or coach. UF could also use those developments as grounds to fire employees with cause.
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