In today’s day and age, many prospective student-athletes are interested in building their brand on and off the field due to the many advantages NIL can offer. And quite frankly, who can blame them?
For the longest time student-athletes didn’t make a dime off their name, image and likeness despite helping their universities rake in millions of dollars.
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But Gideon Davidson, one of the newest Clemson commits at the running back position, doesn’t care about any of that. In fact, the attention he got during a short ceremony while being introduced to Clemson was too much for him, according to his high school head coach.
“Here’s the one thing that I think even makes us more unique in today’s world, where every high school kid is trying to brand his name and get as many hits as he can on social media. And so, certainly there’s going to be a lot of coverage on what we did here a little bit ago, on social media. But, Gideon and the family wanted to keep this very tight from the very beginning,” Frank Rocco told TigerNet. “This wasn’t like, ‘Oh man, I got 50 offers. Oh, now I have 51 offers. Oh, now I have 52. Look how great I am.’…They wanted to keep this tight from the very beginning. I mean, he’s a graduating sophomore. He just finished his sophomore year.
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“He’s got two more years of high school, and I think he identified very early in the process that, at least Clemson for sure, and one or two other really high level schools were great options for them, and why would I want to continue to consider every other good option that might be 500, 800, a thousand, or 5,000 miles away when I’ve got all these really good options right here close? So, I really respect the way the family went through the process of keeping it tight.”