Duke's SHOCKING $8M Football Gamble: Why Basketball School Paid QB Record NIL Deal (2025)

Reports last December of Duke awarding a two-year, $8 million NIL deal to a transfer quarterback elicited two obvious reactions: 1) Duke has that kind of money? And 2) It’s giving it to … a football player?!

“We have aspirations to play at the highest level possible, and that’s counter, maybe, to what people have always thought of with Duke football,” said Greg Pritchard, a former Duke defensive lineman and co-founder of the football program’s NIL collective. “So it was very purposeful for us to go after the best quarterback that we could possibly get.”

Once Tulane’s Darian Mensah entered the transfer portal, Duke’s staff evaluated him and rated Mensah as “significantly higher than any other quarterback that was available,” said its chief football strategy officer, Binuk Kodituwakku.

So Pritchard quickly mobilized donors and got a deal done within days.

But landing the prized quarterback is one thing. As Kodituwakku said last week, “A big thing about Duke donors is they want to see a return on investment.”

Those donors likely had mixed reactions last weekend when Mensah, a third-year sophomore, faced his first big test, against No. 11 Illinois. He was an impressive 23-of-34 for 334 yards and two touchdowns, but he also had three turnovers. His team had five on the day. The Blue Devils hung in for three quarters before losing 45-19 at home.

“Darian played very well, but he’s a developing player that’s going to learn some lessons on ball security today,” head coach Manny Diaz said afterward. “He showed with our offense today, against a really, really good defense, that we’ve got some really dangerous weapons.”

Next up for Duke: A trip Saturday to Mensah’s former school, Tulane.

In the still-nascent name, image and likeness era, the players who receive the most highly publicized deals inevitably garner a higher level of scrutiny. See former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava, now at UCLA, who signed a four-year, $8 million contract in high school and garnered considerable backlash for leaving the Vols last spring after his representatives reportedly asked for more money. Or former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, now at Miami, whose stolen Mercedes and Lamborghini became a national headline.

In this case, though, most college football fans had never heard of Mensah prior to him landing at Duke. And many still haven’t.

Just 13 months ago, the two-star recruit out of San Luis Obispo, Calif., was still a third-string backup for an AAC school. He ultimately won Tulane’s starting job in preseason camp and went on to lead the Green Wave to a conference championship game. He finished as the nation’s sixth-rated passer while averaging 9.5 yards per attempt, tied with No. 1 draft pick Cam Ward and Ohio State’s Will Howard for third nationally.

Two weeks into the 2024 season, he signed with an agent who set out to make him the highest-paid player in the country. Now, the 20-year-old has his own house, bought a Mercedes for himself and a Dodge Charger for his mom and started a foundation to help young athletes in his hometown.

“It all happened so fast,” he said, “I didn’t really get to sit back and realize how life-changing NIL could be.”

All he’s expected to do is elevate the profile of a traditionally mid-level Power 4 program long overshadowed by its basketball counterparts.

About that $8 million deal, first reported by CBS. Two people involved in the negotiations said that figure is accurate. Others involved in the negotiations said it is not. Kodituwakku, who manages Duke’s contract negotiations, did not offer specifics but said, “The number’s not as high as what’s been said, and it’s very incentive-laden.”

But even if Mensah earns closer to $3 million, it would put him in an exclusive club with Miami’s Beck, Michigan’s Bryce Underwood, Oklahoma’s John Mateer and Penn State’s Drew Allar. (Texas’ Arch Manning may be making more from endorsements.)

But unlike Mensah, those other quarterbacks all play for college football blue bloods.

Duke has at least been respectable for some time. Beginning in 2012, Duke reached six bowl games in seven seasons under longtime coach David Cutcliffe before a three-year down period led to his ouster. His replacement, Mike Elko, led Duke to a nine-win season in 2022 and 8-5 the next, before leaving for Texas A&M. In December 2023, athletic director Nina King hired Diaz, once head coach at Miami, who led the Blue Devils to their second nine-win season in three years and a trip to the Gator Bowl, its first January bowl game in 30 years.

Diaz’s first big catch in the transfer portal was Texas quarterback Maalik Murphy, for whom the collective paid around $1 million. It was more than 10 times what his predecessor, Riley Leonard, was making before leaving for a seven-figure deal at Notre Dame.

Murphy, now at Oregon State, had a respectable 2024 season, throwing for nearly 3,000 yards. But the staff felt his lack of mobility limited the offense. It quietly began scouting for an upgrade.

Kodituwakku, a native of Australia who previously managed the salary cap for an Australian Football League club, and John Garrett, general manager of player personnel, oversee Duke’s roster acquisition. Garrett handles scouting. Kodituwakku handles the numbers. He utilizes a database with advanced stats on thousands of college players to identify potential fits and assess their dollar value.

“We’re trying to put in systems and processes that will help us A) stretch our resources and B) minimize the chance of making poor decisions,” said Kodituwakku. “We’re always going to be a developmental program, so we’ve got to hit on our portal acquisitions at a higher rate than other schools.”

Mensah first began catching attention in the Green Wave’s second game of the season, when they nearly upset No. 17 Kansas State. He threw for 342 yards (and had two turnovers) and appeared to throw a touchdown that tied the score with 17 seconds left, which got wiped out by an offensive pass interference penalty on his receiver.

Noah Reisenfeld, an agent at Young Money APAA Sports, got an early tip on Mensah through a connection at Tulane and swooped in after the K-State game to sign him. Reisenfeld, 25, garnered backlash last January for claiming “pretty much every NIL agency charges (college athletes) 20 percent,” compared with 3-to-5 percent for pro contracts, due to the smaller value of most college deals.

He speaks with similar candor about his pursuit last year of a lucrative Power 4 deal for Mensah, who became the top-ranked player in the portal in The Athletic upon his Dec. 8 announcement. (His position would, like others’, move as more players entered the portal.)

Mensah committed to Duke three days later, suggesting the Blue Devils were his only suitor. Reisenfeld disputes that.

“As quiet as it was publicly, it was louder than a lot of people probably think,” he said. “The only schools that I did not speak to were Texas, Washington and Clemson,” all of whom had established quarterbacks returning. “I had conversations with everyone else under the sun.”

Two sources involved with Mensah’s recruitment said that Auburn had interest, before landing Oklahoma’s Jackson Arnold. One of those sources and another source with knowledge of Mensah’s recruitment said UCLA pursued him as well. But the options thinned once Reisenfeld made it known the ambitious price tag he was seeking for his client.

Duke was undeterred.

Diaz and Kodituwakku were told they’d be receiving the first of three visits by Mensah, and prepared a presentation highlighting both how he’d fit into their offense and their plan to surround him with new weapons. At Tulane, Mensah had led a run-oriented offense with a lot of play-action passing, whereas Diaz and Brewer’s scheme is heavier on run-pass options, progressions and vertical passing.

“The fact that they pushed the ball vertically down the field was a big one for me,” said Mensah. “And in this offense, the quarterback has all the control. That’s something that I really wanted.”

He promptly committed to Duke without taking other visits. (No other visits had yet been scheduled.)

Mensah picking Duke continued an NIL-era trend of high-profile recruits and transfers choosing less “obvious” programs. Diaz cites as an example last year’s top-two Heisman finishers. Travis Hunter, the No. 1 player in the Class of 2022, became the No. 2 NFL draft pick after playing for Jackson State and Colorado. Ashton Jeanty turned down lucrative offers from major programs to remain at Boise State for his last season and became the No. 6 pick.

Or college basketball, where Rutgers last year landed Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, who both became top-five NBA draft picks, and where the top-ranked 2025 player, AJ Dybantsa, signed with BYU for a deal reported to be as much as $7 million.

“In the past, you had to go to a small handful of schools as a player to have a brand, and that’s not the case anymore,” said Diaz. “Kids don’t believe that they have to go to the blue blood schools to achieve what they want to achieve.”

The news on Dec. 11 that Duke had landed the touted quarterback came as a surprise to many. A couple of weeks later came reports of the two-year, $8 million figure that shocked the sport. Landing Mensah served notice that Duke is no longer content to be known as a basketball school.

And the program made good on its promise to upgrade his supporting cast. Receivers Cooper Barkate (Harvard) and Andrel Anthony (Oklahoma) already have a combined 17 catches for 314 yards through two games. Now, the Blue Devils have to go out and prove all that money was well spent.

“Obviously, (Duke football) is not as big as basketball,” Mensah said last week, “but I think I’m here to change it.”

— The Athletic’s Sam Khan contributed reporting.

(Top photo: Lance King / Getty Images)