Elijah Haven is exactly the type of player the Alabama Crimson Tide needs playing for Kalen DeBoer. He is every bit the five-star out of Louisiana, opting to pick Alabama over the Georgia Bulldogs during his high-profile recruitment. While neither SEC power is a major player in the NIL space, apparently, that did not matter for Haven until the end. He picked between these schools for all the right reasons.
Haven spoke to Greg Olsen on Youth Inc over how little NIL seemed to impact his Alabama decision.
“Honestly, for us, it’s never about the money but about the place I want to develop the best at,” Haven said. “So, those conversations didn’t come till pretty much I had my top two. It was Bama and Georgia, and we didn’t really dive deep into those conversations until we got to that top two.”
When it comes to being developed as a quarterback, that jumped to the front of the line for Haven in his recruitment. Getting to learn under the likes of DeBoer and Ryan Grubb factored far more into his decision than any financial gains. It just goes to show how mature Haven is coming out of high school. He wants to keep the main thing the main thing during the early stages of his college football career.
Here is the episode of Youth Inc where Olsen interviewed the five-star Alabama quarterback commit.
It goes to show that Haven seems to understand the bigger picture more so than some of his peers.
Elijah Haven seems to fit the Kalen DeBoer-Alabama era like hand in glove
While so much has been made about DeBoer's recruitment in this cycle, all it takes is for one player to completely debunk a false narrative. Haven may have five stars next to his name, but it is way more important that he wants to play for Alabama than anything else. He can look at what DeBoer has done at developing the quarterback position and easily decide this is where he wants to go play football.
Whether it be Ty Simpson, Jalen Milroe, Michael Penix Jr., or Jake Haener, all of these quarterbacks got better playing in DeBoer's system. The best part about it is DeBoer will cater his team's offensive game plans to what his quarterbacks do best. Milroe could really run, while the others were more of your prototypical pocket passers. Haven can move as well, but he projects to be a precision passer.
Overall, water is going to eventually find its level in the wonderful world of NIL. There are programs with big-pocketed boosters who will elevate their schools far beyond what they have been up until recently. Schools like Miami, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech immediately come to mind. However, pay-for-play may go out of style, especially when the allocation of resources is going to high schoolers.
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Ultimately, Haven understands that his NIL value will be attached to how well he plays. Schools like Alabama and Georgia are far more interested in paying players for what they have done, when compared to what they could be. There are others like Indiana that use the transfer portal as free agency to rebuild their teams every season on the fly. Alabama will adjust accordingly, but will be fine.
As long as Haven remains committed to Alabama, the Crimson Tide should be alright in recruitment.
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