High school and college sports were once one of the most pure forms of competition– a celebration of teamwork, discipline and community pride. But now, the sports world, its purity tainted by illegal recruitment and the illusion of money, has become a corrupt business.
Behind the bright Friday, Saturday and Sunday night lights and the roar of a stadium crowd lies an underground system of backdoor deals, financial promises and transfer manipulation taking over what we know as sports. Coaches, recruiters and private athletic programs are bending or outright breaking the rules to build super teams with money they don’t have and promises they can’t keep. In 2024, college football quarterback Matthew Sluka was verbally promised $100,000 to play at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He was given $3,000 and was given no further payments. Earlier that same year, another quarterback, Jaden Rashada, was promised $13.85 million to play at the University of Florida, of which “only” $150,000 was paid to him.
However, recruitment problems are not limited to college. While spending money for NIL (name, image and likeness) is illegal for high schools in the state of Texas, it hasn’t stopped illegal recruitment from happening. On Sept. 4, it was announced that the Rio Vista football team was banned from 2025 postseason play and multiple of their student-athletes were ruled ineligible for violating recruitment rules. The allegations focused on two players who moved from the same club team to the same district with the intent of playing football, leading to the ban on the program as a whole.
In 2024, Class 6A Division I runner-up North Shore was faced with recruiting penalties, causing their head coach to be suspended for the first two games of the season and their offensive coordinator to receive a three-year suspension for his role in the illegal recruitment of student-athletes.
These problems aren’t just happening in other parts of Texas; they’re happening in Austin and in our school district. Over the summer, the LBJ Jaguars football team was forced to nullify all 11 of their 2024 wins due to using ineligible players. After the nullifications, two Jaguar players, safety and wide receiver Yaheim Riley and running back Caleb Crenshaw, transferred to McCallum’s rival, the Anderson Trojans. This transfer caused further suspicion of breaching illegal transferring and eligibility rules in Austin ISD. Since the transfers, the Trojans are 9-1, including a win against McCallum, 6-0 in their district, including a win against a top-60 school, A&M Consolidated, and are now ranked 121st in the state, their highest rank since being 108th in the 2011-12 season. As of the end of the regular season, Crenshaw has scored 21 touchdowns on the season and is averaging 188.9 yards per game, and Riley has totaled 57 tackles and a team-high 4 interceptions, adding 103 yards on 10 catches on the offensive side of the ball. While one can make the argument that the Trojans are simply having a historic season, it’s hard to ignore two suspicious transfers that resulted in this success.
It’s not just football, either. In 2024, 18 female basketball players transferred to Oak Cliff Faith Family Academy in Dallas, Texas, and all 18 were ruled ineligible for the postseason. The head coach, Andrea Robinson, and two assistant coaches were given a two-year suspension from all UIL activities, followed by two years of probation and a public reprimand.
All of these examples likely included a coach convincing a student-athlete that everything would be okay and nobody would find out, but instead, the coach ruined the player’s career. Coaches and recruiters are slowly ruining sports as we know them by bribing kids and telling them it’s okay.
While coaches are responsible for ruining sports, so are the athletes. Committing to play sports at a college used to be something set in stone for your four years. But then came the transfer portal, NIL money and decommitments. Now it’s a dogfight for which program can give the clueless teenager the most money.
Not only can it ruin the athlete’s life, but it also takes all the fun out of sports. Remember when your favorite basketball player at your favorite college played there for years in a row? Well, now your “favorite player” can transfer more times than the number of seasons they can play. The college football class of 2021 saw 121 of the top 600 prospects transfer more than once. Check any team, they have new transfers. The University of Texas at Austin has 36 new players on their roster for the 2025 season, 13 at the University of Alabama, eight at the University of Florida, 11 at the University of Southern California, eight at the University of Notre Dame, and 14 at Texas A&M University.
Where have sports gone? We’re shoving money in front of teenagers, some of whom haven’t gotten a proper education because they’ve been so good at sports all their lives, and telling them they’re set for life. These are kids, not mature adults who have their lives figured out. Even professional athletes throw their lives away by spending too much money, such as NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown, who declared bankruptcy in May 2025 and former University of Texas quarterback Vince Young, who declared bankruptcy in January 2014. We may sit and wonder why young prodigies are given $8 million to play Big 12 football and transfer to play in the SEC, but I can almost guarantee that another school offered them more money.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem. Firstly, it is imperative that instead of prioritizing money, we prioritize the health and longevity of these young athletes’ careers. Schools should invest in the students’ future, not just their stats. These kids don’t know about the world yet. Invest in their personal improvement, both on and off the field. Give them a roadmap consisting of a 4-year plan including skill goals, performance analytics, injury prevention, and mental training. Help the kids understand how to navigate the leap from collegiate to professional leagues or olympic teams through mentorship with agents and coaches.
Next, use the university’s academic programs to offer connections that go far beyond sports. Match athletes with former players working in industries beyond sports or allow athletes to train abroad and let them see the world. Create international tournaments that broadcast athletes’ stories and skills to the whole world.
Third, nurture the individual behind the player. These athletes need to be prepared for all aspects of life, not just sports ahead of where they are now. Help them explore who they are outside of their sport. Guide them to learn what they value, what kind of leader they want to be, and what impact they want to make. Athletes are driven by purpose, not just paychecks.
Finally, give these athletes a way to leave a mark on their community, their sport, and the world. Create legacy funds or scholarships under their name and create athlete-led serivce projects where a team or a player visits and donates to a local school or charity. Give them a way to give back what privilege they have. The impact the athletes will have on those programs is an intangible value, one that lives with them forever and not just numbers on a piece of paper.
However, we must not forget the problem at hand: athletes with invisible price tags hanging over their heads. While these problems are beyond our control, the world of sports is undoubtedly taking a turn towards corruption. Instead of athletes being athletes, they are becoming assets for collegiate and professional programs, open for trades and transfer portal eligibility. Sports have turned into a financial game. Who can put the biggest price tag on the youngest kid?
