In this new era of NIL in college sports, the dollar signs trump everything else. The money continues to skyrocket in both basketball and football, as it was recently revealed the staggering amount of money that Duke basketball freshman sensation Cooper Flagg earned during his one year with the Blue Devils.
However, Manny Diaz and the Duke football program are under their own wave of immense pressure after signing Tulane transfer quarterback Darian Mensah to a monster two-year, $8 million deal.
With that insane spending mixed with a successful year one under Diaz, a season where the Blue Devils won nine games for just the third time since joining the ACC in 1953, pressure is amounting on Duke to not only be a good team, but be a true ACC Championship contender and a contender on a national scale.
RJ Young, FOX Sports college football analyst, recently discussed the new wave of pressure on Blue Devil football amid the huge payday to the rising redshirt sophomore Mensah, who will be making much more money than guys like John Mateer, one of the best quarterbacks in college football last season.
"Now, Duke is going to get measured at the quarterback position the way that we measure Clemson and Cade Klubnik," Young said on Adapt & Respond with RJ Young. "Who made the Playoff, who won the ACC Championship game. Is that dude worth $4 million a year? Damn straight, he is. Think about what Clemson was able to accomplish with him at quarterback."
Mensah is coming into Durham with a ton of upside, but Diaz and the coaching staff are certainly taking a gamble on the redshirt sophomore with his $8 million contract over two seasons. Mensah finished the 2024 season with 2,732 passing yards to go along with 22 touchdowns and six interceptions en route to leading the Green Wave to an AAC Championship game berth.
The former Tulane signal caller has the game to be a great quarterback in the ACC, but with the spending that the Blue Devils went after in order to sign him, being on the cusp of an ACC Championship is no longer good enough. If the program is willing to go out and make Mensah one of the highest-paid players in the history of college football, the only result that would make this decision rational is a College Football Playoff berth, and at the very least, an ACC Championship victory.