DESTIN, Fla. — A relaxed-looking Billy Napier mentioned he was “comfy with (his) actions” in his first public feedback on the blockbuster Jaden Rashada lawsuit. Rashada filed authorized motion final week accusing the Florida coach of fraud, amongst different allegations, stemming again to a failed $13.85 million identify, picture and likeness deal.

“I feel it is vital for everyone to know that I am unable to remark as a result of litigation,” Napier mentioned at SEC spring conferences. “However I do trust in our authorized crew. I’m comfy with my actions. And I am grateful for the college’s help. We’re gonna hold it at that and type of let the method take its course.”

The Florida coach mentioned he first came upon he was one in all three listed defendants — together with high Gators booster Hugh Hathcock and former Florida staffer Marcus Castro-Waker — by means of media stories. Rashada’s authorized crew, led by well-known Houston lawyer Rusty Hardin, filed the lawsuit in federal court docket final Tuesday, arguing that the trio fraudulently recruited Rashada, then a extremely regarded highschool quarterback prospect, to attend Florida with no intention of following by means of on a $13.85 million deal. 

Particularly, the lawsuit claims “fraudulent misrepresentation and inducement, aiding and abetting fraud, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, negligent misrepresentation, tortious interference with a enterprise relationship or contract and aiding and abetting tortious interference.” 

Napier was requested how he’d tackle the scenario with recruits and issues that Florida did not reside as much as mark with its guarantees. 

“This narrative has been on the market for a very long time,” Napier mentioned. “I feel we received that query two years in the past or a year-and-a-half in the past, and I do not essentially suppose it slowed us down, to a point. So, look, we will hold shifting ahead. This course of has been going, in the end, the NCAA course of. We will not say far more than that.” 

The NCAA notified Florida final June that it was investigating the Rashada scenario which included interviewing Rashada and Castro-Walker, sources informed CBS Sports activities. Nonetheless, because the NCAA’s enforcement crew labored to analyze and construct a case that a number of insiders anticipated to be probably the most important of the NIL period, the states of Tennessee and Virginia sued the NCAA to halt enforcement of its NIL-related guidelines. 

The 2 states received an early authorized win in late February when U.S. District Decide Clifton Corker issued a preliminary injunction that primarily stopped the NCAA from imposing guidelines associated to NIL and recruiting.  

That left solely the authorized system to deal with the Rashada scenario. 

The lawsuit argues that Napier, Hathcock and his firm (Velocity Automotive) and Castro-Walker satisfied Rashada to surrender a beforehand agreed upon $9.5 million deal to attend Miami in favor of Florida. It consists of allegations that Hathcock informed Rashada, “No matter Jaden wanted to return to UF, Hathcock would make occur.” 

It additionally alleges his father, Harlen Rashada, was provided a job within the safety trade throughout a recruiting go to. Direct contact between a recruit and a booster throughout an on-campus go to is in opposition to NCAA guidelines. 

To sway Rashada’s resolution, Hathcock and Castro-Walker provided the $13.85 million take care of $5.35 million (together with a $500,000 signing bonus) set to return by means of Hathcock’s Velocity Automotive firm and the remainder by means of Gator Guard, the NIL collective that he began. Hathcock had beforehand dedicated to donating $12.6 million to the Gator Boosters, and early media stories said the Gator Guard raised $5 million in its first 24 hours. 

Earlier than the deal was finalized, Hathcock knowledgeable Rashada’s representatives that he now not wished to route the NIL funds by means of his firm as a result of he deliberate to promote it, based on the lawsuit. As a substitute, he and Castro-Walker proposed that Walker and the Gator Collective (Florida’s NIL collective) pay instantly for the deal.  

Eddie Rojas, CEO of Gator Collective, allegedly texted Zager in regards to the impending deal: “Inform Jaden we stay up for setting him up for all times. Have to arrange his brokerage accounts ASAP. Dude is wealthy and we simply received began.” 

The deal was formally signed on Nov. 10, 2022, with the primary $500,000 cost resulting from Rashada on Dec. 5. 

The lawsuit claims Hathcock by no means had any intention of creating that cost and everybody concerned, together with Napier, knew that. 

All of it got here to a head on Dec. 21, the primary day of the early signing interval, the place Napier allegedly personally vouched to Rashada that Florida alumni “had been good on their promise that Jaden would obtain $1 million if he signed with UF on Nationwide Signing Day” and that Hathcock would make the cost. 

Harlen Rashada later texted Zager, “Coach Napier mentioned [Hathcock’s] on a airplane and that he’ll wire 1 Mil. He desires the paper work and I am sending it in case you are good.” It claims that Castro-Walker threatened Rashada that if he didn’t signal, Napier would possibly pull his scholarship provide. 

Hardin beforehand informed CBS Sports activities that Napier by no means ought to have been making these guarantees, which, on the time, had been additionally in opposition to NCAA guidelines. “That is not a task he ought to have been concerned in, he should not have made these guarantees and he ought to have stayed out of that complete space,” Hardin mentioned. “He did not.”

Rashada spent the 2023 season at Arizona State earlier than transferring to Georgia this spring.

Requested Monday night in regards to the Rashada lawsuit, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey mentioned, “I am not a fan of lawsuits. That is what I feel.”