Welcome to Stars Matter, a recruiting podcast from The Athletic.

I'm Mitch Light, college football editor with the Athletic, and I'm joined by Ari Wasserman,

our national recruiting writer for the athletic.

And Ari, once again, a special guest, Andy Staples, is joining us, our colleague from the Andy Staples show and friends.

Guys, we're going to dive right in.

Our other colleague, Bruce Feldman, tweeted today that the Travis Hunter to Jackson State,

I think he called it the biggest shocker on signing day that he's seen since covering the sport.

Andy, would you agree with Bruce?

It felt historic because we're in this period of quick, radical change, and then you got a guy and i honestly i thought this was going to

happen in basketball first because you'd seen a lot of top basketball recruits mikey williams

the the top 2023 guy i believe he had three or four hbccues and his his final did happen didn't

make her thon maker's younger brother go to howard it didn't work out. Yeah, but he's like number 15. This is number one. Okay. So, or number two, depending on what,

what service you're looking at. He's number one. Yeah. Yeah. So this is huge. And what it shows is how much more leverage power, you name it, the athletes have. Because this is a guy who

looked at the situation and decided, hey, I don't need the infrastructure of a Florida state or

Georgia or an Alabama to be successful, to get me to the NFL. I can go play for a guy who is one of the best,

whoever played my position.

He can develop me for the NFL,

and I can walk in the footsteps of Walter Payton,

except the difference is when Walter Payton went to Jackson State,

it's because none of the powers wanted him.

And meanwhile, Travis Hunter can go to Jackson State and say, I don't need

any of the powers. I can help bring some of the power to Jackson State. And I mean, when you

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