This revelation should put to rest once and for all whether we had a legitimate shot, in the end, of landing Cooper Flagg. Do I believe at one point he considered us seriously? Yes. But by the end, he already knew what this number would be, approximately. And no matter what anyone says here, even with some similar endorsement deals he was not going to make $28 million by coming here to UConn.
Maybe coming to UConn we could have gotten him up over the $10 million mark? For argument's sake I will even agree if you want to argue it could have gotten close to $20 million. Fine.
That is still a monstrous gap of $8 million and probably much more. If you don't think that mattered, then you are either willfully lying, you got your head in the sand or you have those UConn navy/state flag blue sunglasses stapled permanently to your head.
As we pretty much have known all along, only 2 or 3 other schools can muster the NIL money that Duke can (Kentucky... BYU... Stanford... and maybe Kansas?). Duke has more captains of industry than any other school not named Stanford. And yeah, it matters. That is what this astounding number proves.
If Duke wants someone badly enough, we aren't getting him. Period. End of story.