UNC QB Drake Maye on transfer rumors: ‘That Carolina blue is special’

Drake Maye is the too-early favorite to be the top pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. I say too early, because the 2024 draft is 16 months away; four months ago, Maye was a redshirt freshman in the running to win the QB1 job at North Carolina.

But let’s say he is the top pick in 2024. The top pick in 2023 is slotted to get a $26.2 million signing bonus.

That’s a lot of money for signing a piece of paper.

Rumors have had Maye, who passed for 4,115 yards, 36 TDs and seven INTs this season at Carolina, bolting for NIL money for weeks.

Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi upped the ante this week, saying, apparently out of his ass, that he’d heard two schools had offered Maye $5 million to transfer.

That was news to, among others, Drake Maye.

“I don’t know what that was about,” Maye told ESPN. “You have to enter the transfer portal to talk to these schools and hear these offers. For me, I think college football is going to turn into a mess. They’re going to have to do something. There was nothing to me or my family directly offered from any of these other schools. Nothing was said or offered to the Mayes.”

Examining the notion that he’d leave for money, one, there’d be the issue of going somewhere where he’d basically be starting over in terms of the system, the personnel, which may work out for him, but also very much may not.

Even $5 million in NIL money for a year, versus staying put, in a familiar system, putting at risk being the #1 pick, that might not make sense.

Then, two, it’s not like Maye just ended up at UNC by chance. His dad, Mark, was a UNC QB. His older brother, Luke, was a star basketball player who was a member of the 2017 national-title team.

“It wouldn’t sit right, especially with all my family,” Drake Maye said. “Switching it up after everything the Mayes went through wouldn’t represent what the university means to me or how much it means for me to go there. It’d mess up the mojo and all we’ve built there. That Carolina blue is special. There’s no other color in the world that meaningful.”

This seems open and shut, but still, Maye gets the questions.

He took to Instagram a couple of weeks ago to try to counter the rumors and speculation, but there are going to be rumors and speculation.

“Really, not that much went down,” Maye said. “There was speculation and an Instagram post, and a head coach said I turned down this amount of money that I’d never heard of. That’s basically the gist.”