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Washington football star turned down $500k to stay with Huskies
- Story byHuskies Wire
- Washington football star turned down $500k to stay with Huskies
On December 19, 2024, Washington Huskies running back Jonah Coleman and wide receiver Denzel Boston sat in front of the media ahead of the team's appearance in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, and confirmed that they had both received NIL offers from programs trying to tamper with them and draw them into the transfer portal.
According to a report from The Denver Post's Luca Evans, several of those offers were north of $2 million. However, even though some of those offers were as much as $500,000 more than he would have made after staying at Washington, he chose to stay on Montlake with Jedd Fisch and running backs coach Scottie Graham after following the pair up from Arizona in January 2024.
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"He was kind of like the poster child of players that we wanted to promote within our program," Fisch told Evans.
Although his senior season was hampered by a knee injury that he suffered in early November, Coleman's decision to stay loyal paid off both on and off the field. On the field, he rushed for 758 yards and 15 touchdowns, and added 31 catches for 354 yards and a pair of scores before going on to be selected by the Denver Broncos in the fourth round of the 2026 NFL draft.
Off the field, he became the first member of his family to graduate from college, and he did so with a 3.94 grade point average, which was good enough to earn him a spot among the finalists for the William V. Campbell trophy, which is also known as the "Academic Heisman."
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Even in the modern world of college football, where money has taken a stranglehold over the sport, Coleman's story shows that there's still plenty of loyalty left across the country.
"There's always other teams trying to come in and offer you more money, but you've got to understand where the value is at," Boston said in the same press conference. "Is that real over there? You still have to take the risk to go over there, and you might not like your new life over there."
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington Huskies star turned down $500k to stay on Montlake
