One of the biggest risers in the 2025 recruiting class was five-star quarterback Keelon Russell, who signed with the Alabama Crimson Tide during the early signing period in December.
Russell, a 6’3”, 185-pound quarterback, was seen as the No. 2 overall recruit in the 2025 class according to 247Sports, and had initially been an SMU commit before flipping and remaining committed to Alabama.
However, while he was pledged to the Crimson Tide, there were still a number of suitors coming after the five-star quarterback, and a few had some deep pockets.
“As y’all know, money was getting tossed towards me from a lot of schools,” Russell shared on Sunday. “I wasn’t really never about the money person. I felt like that was short-term value instead of long-term value. If you do good, like you get paid a million dollars and go stink it up in college, no booster gonna want to pay that to see you play. Shoot, you might get benched and career is over. So like, you gotta think about, you know what I’m saying?”
“If a school offered me 250K right now to go play for them and next three years I dominate, get Heisman stuff, now you’re [going to be worth] 5 million, you know what I’m saying? Worth 5 million, then you get to the pros, so it’s just long-term about the NIL stuff. I don’t really worry about that stuff right now. I know that if I do my thing, it’s gonna come regardless.”
When it came to the decision between Alabama and SMU, it was football-related for Russell, but the flip didn’t stop the Mustangs from making a last-minute push.
“With the flip from SMU to Alabama, the NIL, I mean, it’s still the same,” Russell said. “SMU had some worries, so they was trying to up it, but I told them, I was like, ‘Hey man, this is a full family thing. So like, I want you to feel as if I’m doing this for us.’ So I mean, honestly, yeah, like I said, it’s a long-term thing for me.”
Outside of SMU and Alabama though, Russell revealed there were three teams that made a late push for his services, and that came with some hefty NIL numbers: Texas, Colorado and LSU.
“They wanted me, you know what I’m saying, to pursue up there,” Russell said of the three schools. “My name started to jump around a lot of platforms and stuff. So a lot of coaches opened up their eyes and Alabama was there before it even all happened. So I respected them for that. And shoot, Alabama came to my practice, seemed probably one of the worst practices as a quarterback. Honestly, I was off that day and for them to even give me the chance to be their quarterback and saw something into me.”
Still, there were discussions about potentially taking visits to those schools as numbers were being tossed around.
“It was, it was [a real thought],” Russell acknowledged. “Like, honestly, who wouldn’t want to go to Colorado for real? I mean, so it was, it was something that I was thinking about and then words started getting around, false stuff. So I shut it down, said, ‘Nah, I can’t do that.’
“So LSU, I was kind of thinking about it as well. Colorado, I was thinking about it. Texas, I was thinking about going down there. I actually went down there and before I committed to Alabama, so I was kind of thinking about a lot of it a little bit, but had to stay home, stay truthful to the world, to my fans and my people. [The three schools] threw some numbers. I mean, I can’t really talk about that. I know it’s, it’s big. Just know that it’s big.”
At the end of the day, while the money was legit for Russell, his main focus was football, which led him to the Crimson Tide.
“But like I said, I ain’t really worried about the money, man. I’m here to ball. I’m here to play ball. They was doing it free back then. I’m doing it for [me] right now, in the heart, but just getting the money on the back end, you know what I mean? So, yeah, but it was some offers thrown at me, obviously, being one of the top-ranked quarterbacks, you gonna get some money within that.”
Now locked and loaded with Alabama, Russell is excited about potentially being the team’s next quarterback should Jalen Milroe enter the NFL Draft, but knows it’ll be a tough journey and that he’ll need to compete to earn his place at the next level.
However, despite being committed to the Crimson Tide for some time, it was still a tough process for the five-star quarterback as schools were relentless in their pursuit of him till the very end.
