The nation's top-ranked high school football player decided last month to play for Michigan, reports CBS Sports. But maybe the most unusual factor in the decision by quarterback Bryce Underwood is the role played by none other than Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire who founded Oracle and is ranked by Forbes as the world's third-richest person. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, it "was the biggest twist in a recruiting saga that ranks among the wildest in recent memory, even by the already absurd standards of college football."
If you're thinking Ellison must be a Michigan alum, you'd be wrong. In fact, he had no known connection to the university before this unfolded. Then a booster group publicly thanked Ellison and a woman named "Jolin," identified as his wife, for being "instrumental" in landing the teen, who'd previously committed to LSU. The Journal figured out that Jolin is 33-year-old Keren Zhu, who graduated from Michigan in 2012 and evidently became Ellison's sixth wife in the not-too-distant past.
The New York Post notes that personal calls from Michigan alums Tom Brady and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy also helped sway Underwood. But Ellison's deep pockets appeared to trump all in the new "NIL" era of college sports, in which athletes can profit from their name, image, and likeness. Underwood's father tells the Journal he expects his son to make about $15 million while playing for Michigan. (More college football stories.)
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