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Former NBA player Nate Robinson claims Washington booster offered him $100,000 to play football in college
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According to Nate Robinson, the going rate for a small cornerback in the Pac-10 (now known as the Pac-12) was six figures back in the early 2000’s. If that’s accurate, there’s no telling what an elite shutdown corner could be worth today.
Most known in Washington for his fantastic career on the hardwood, Robinson played both basketball and football as a freshman for the Huskies back in 2002. He ended up playing only one season of football before deciding to concentrate his efforts on basketball. A decision that paid off financially in the long run with a lengthy NBA career but if Robinson is telling the truth, cost him a significant amount of money during his college career.
During a recent appearance on the Sports Illustrated Holdat podcast, Robinson claims he was offered $100,000 by a Washington booster to return to the football field. That seems like a high offer for a 5-foot-9 defensive back that didn’t establish himself as a lockdown corner on the field, but that’s the way Robinson tells it:
“When they fired Rick Neuheisel my freshman year that made it easy for me to make my decision to quit and go play basketball, which I wanted to do anyway. For my three years at UW, I had a booster offer me $100,000 per year to come back and play football because they needed Nate Robinson back on the football field because we weren’t winning any games, it wasn’t exciting,” Robinson said on the program, according to Dan Gartland of Sports Illustrated. “It was crazy, we went through a dark age at the University of Washington.”
Robinson would go on to say he turned down the money due to his desire to stick to basketball but he admits the offer caused him some hesitation. After mulling the offer with his mother, Robinson said he decided to give up his football career for basketball after his mother gave her blessing.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
