Earlier today in an interview with Adam Zagoria, highly-touted MSU hoops target Malik Newman announced he would not be signing a National Letter of Intent, but rather only the necessary scholarship papers, known as a Financial Aid Agreement. This has become sort of a trend among high-profile recruits across all sports, including college football.
To be quite honest, when I first heard the news, I wasn’t really sure the difference. My research found however that there is in fact a difference that greatly benefits the athlete.
For starters, a National Letter of Intent (often abbreviated as NLI or LOI) binding agreement between a school and a recruit in which the player agrees to attend the school for one year and the school agrees to provide financial aid to the student-athlete.