Let’s cut through the noise on the Jackson Cantwell-Miami situation. Yeah, Mario Cristobal just landed the highest-ranked recruit of his career on Tuesday—the No. 1 overall player in the class of 2026. But as you can guess, there’s a whole lot of barking about buying recruits and not enough people actually paying attention to why the 5-star OT chose the Canes over the usual SEC and Big Ten powerhouses.
Jackson Cantwell has the ‘it’ factor. At 6’8, 320 pounds, he’s no less than an armored tank. Last season at Nixa High School, he was a formidable presence on the O-line with 158 blocks. The guy turned 14 games into 3,710 rushing yards for his team and led them to the state title game. This was always going to be a high-stakes recruitment. And naturally, that means money talk. So when On3’s Brooks Austin reported that Cantwell had a $5M NIL offer on the table, the internet predictably lit itself on fire.
On May 13, On3’s J.D. PicKell posted an excerpt of the development between Jackson Cantwell and Miami on X. “A lot of people are going to be very quick to be toxic and bitter and say, ‘well he just chose Miami because they probably threw a bag at him right?’,” he said. “Y’all, it’s modern college football. This kid’s the No. 1 player in America. It would be abnormal. It would be ridiculous if he wasn’t getting a pretty good chunk of change to go wherever he was going to college, Miami or otherwise.” And you know, he isn’t your average blue-chip player either.
It would be weird if NIL wasn’t a factor for Jackson Cantwell as the #1 player in America.
But let’s not pretend that staff that developed Penei Sewell had nothing to do with Miami winning this recruitmenthttps://t.co/HtjWxe1oVS pic.twitter.com/QomFXcXg2J
— J.D. PicKell (@jdpickell) May 13, 2025
Jackson Cantwell is a generational lineman with Olympic bloodlines. His dad, Christian Cantwell, was a silver medalist in shot put in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. And his mom, Teri Steer, competed as a thrower at the 2000 Sydney Games. So, of course, there are going to be multi-million-dollar offers thrown at him from interested programs like Georgia, Oregon, and Ohio State. “Sources told me last week the price tag for Jackson Cantwell escalated to close to $5M,” Austin reported. But here’s the thing. He didn’t take it. He didn’t chase the biggest bag but went with Miami.
Earlier, Miami reportedly offered Jackson Cantwell a deal close to $2M in NIL money in his first collegiate year. So if this was just about who offered the fastest checks, he wouldn’t be flying to Coral Gables. Rich schools like Georgia and Oregon could’ve exceeded any figure Mario Cristobal threw at him. “Miami called and called late into the evening. Eventually, the guaranteed money won out, I’m told. That being said, (Alex) Mirabal and a few million aren’t a bad decision,” Austin added. So yeah, the million-dollar question: why did he choose Miami?
Why did Jackson Cantwell pick Miami?
For Jackson Cantwell, it was never about the bag. It was about development, culture, and trust in the trenches. “Miami excites me a lot because they have an offensive-line-oriented coach in Mario Cristobal. I like Coach Cristoabl a lot,” he told On3. “I think Coach Mirabal is a top-five O-line coach in the country… He does a great developing. They always seem to have the right guys on the offensive line.” This talk comes from a kid who understands that Mario Cristobal and OL coach Alex Mirabal developed Penei Sewell into a top-10 NFL pick at Oregon. Francis Mauigoa is about to follow suit. The blueprint is there.
“There’s like a legitimate professional development aspect of this for Jackson Cantwell as to why it would make sense to go to Miami,” PicKell said. Of course, money was involved too, but let’s kill the myth that it was just about the dough.
That narrative’s lazy and undermines everything Miami’s building down there. The Hurricanes’ 2026 class now ranks ninth nationally with 10 commits, four of them blue-chippers. And with Jackson Cantwell as the anchor, the rest of the dominoes are going to start falling. You don’t turn down $5M unless you believe you’ll be worth more after a few years in the right hands. And that’s exactly what Jackson Cantwell just bet on.
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