*Jordan Addison, Southern California Football News: Draft Scout Player News

05/01/22 - WR *Jordan Addison, Jr/2023, Southern California

Pittsburgh wide receiver Jordan Addison's reported plan to transfer from Pitt to Southern California has roiled college football fans far beyond the confines of Western Pennsylvania. Social media was awash in with concern late Friday into Saturday that a name, image and likeness deal - reportedly worth millions - has attracted the Frederick, Md., native away from the school where he won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation's top receiver and helped lead his team to an ACC championship just five short months ago. Experts and fans alike fear the move signals a paradigm shift that will allow the sport's richest programs to simply buy the best players from their opponents by ponying up the necessary cash in NIL deals. That would be a massive shift from the way the sport has done business for more than a century. And even advocates for new NIL laws that allow players to profit from their public profile have concerns about the way current rules can impact competitive balance.

SiriusXM and CBS personalist Danny Kanell was chief among them. Losing Addison would be an obvious and crippling loss to Pitt's 2022 prospects. Others speculate that the deal could not have been completed without some level of tampering. Under current NCAA transfer rules, programs are not supposed to be able to contact players under scholarship from other programs unless and until they formally enter the transfer portal. As of Saturday morning, Addison had not taken that step, leading many to question how he could have lined up such a deal to head to Los Angeles legitimately. To reiterate, nothing is official at the time of this writing. Addison could still back out of the deal and remain at Pitt, where he caught 100 passes for 1,593 yards and 17 touchdowns in 2021. But many seem to feel the conclusion is obvious: Pat Narduzzi's team will lose its best player for cold, hard cash. And there's little anyone can do to stop it. - Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Jr/2023