Syracuse football: Orange add commitment from platinum artist Toosii

With Early Signing Day starting tomorrow, we were watching for any surprises from Syracuse Orange HC Fran Brown, but we didn’t expect a surprise like this.

The 25-year old Nau’jour Grainger was born in Syracuse but moved to North Carolina where he played high school football before launching his music career. Grainger announced earlier this year that he was going to try and pursue his football dreams and after visits to Sacramento State, Maryland, and Duke, he’s coming back home to play for Fran Brown.

I’m sure there are people upset about this, but let’s take the football out of it for a second. Grainger’s got 4.6 million followers on Instagram. This commitment has a write-up in Bleacher Report and Billboard. There are lots of people interested in following Grainger’s return to football after a decade away from the gridiron.

I’m not going to say this is a publicity stunt, but you can see the business potential for both sides. Obviously the journey lends itself to a documentary, but for Syracuse can the Orange NIL program benefit from sales of Toosii jerseys and other merch?

At the very least Fran Brown’s found a way to get a 3-9 program a lot of attention during Championship Week and for a program trying to get back on the right foot, it’s not going to hurt if recruits decide they want to give you a closer look.

Just remember now that every Orange fan’s new favorite song is “Favorite Song”.