The $6 Million Running Back: David Gabriel Georges Rewrote What a Ball Carrier Is Worth
There is a number attached to David Gabriel Georges now, and it follows him into every room.
Six million dollars. Three years. Roughly two million a year, plus travel for a family that still mostly lives fourteen hours north in Quebec. That is what Tennessee reportedly committed to a running back who has not taken a college snap — and what Ohio State and Ole Miss would not match.
Running backs do not get paid like this. That has been the accepted wisdom of the entire NIL era: quarterbacks get the bag, edge rushers get the bag, tackles get the bag, and running backs get told the position is fungible. Georges broke that. Reporting from On3's Pete Nakos and others pegs him as the highest-paid running back recruit in the history of the sport.
He is eighteen years old. He is a senior in high school. And in the photos from the day he put on the orange hat, he is wearing a Friday Night Phenom tee.
From Terrebonne to Chattanooga
The story does not start with money. It starts with a highlight film and an uncle.
Georges grew up in Terrebonne, Quebec, and started playing football at five. He played linebacker before anyone thought to hand him the ball. He spent his freshman year at Armand-Corbeil High School, speaking French, playing a version of the sport that most American recruiting services never look at.
Then his uncle sent tape to a coach at Baylor School in Chattanooga. Georges moved to Tennessee for his sophomore year and learned English after he got there.
What happened next was not gradual.
Sophomore year (2024): roughly 1,000 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns in ten games, a run to the DII-AA state title game, and the Tennessee Titans DII-AA Mr. Football award.
Junior year (2025): 1,756 yards and 27 touchdowns at nearly eleven yards a carry. Baylor's first undefeated season in more than fifty years and a Division II-AAA state championship. MaxPreps National Player of the Year. Rivals Tennessee Player of the Year. A second straight all-state nod.
Somewhere in there was a playoff game where he told his coach to run split zone one more time, went 74 yards, and finished with 435 yards and seven touchdowns.
His coach, Erik Kimrey, has said he does not think Georges has any weaknesses — that he can run around you, through you, or by you.
By the end of that junior season he was a consensus five-star, the No. 2 running back in the 2027 class, and the top prospect in the state of Tennessee.
The bidding war
Georgia walked away first. Kirby Smart does not pay two million dollars for a true freshman running back, and when the number got there, the Bulldogs got out.
Ohio State stayed longest. The Buckeyes had relationships, they had a track record with skill players, and they had a real shot. What they did not have was a shoe company willing to help — reporting from Ohio State insider Jeremy Birmingham indicated Nike declined to get involved on the grounds that it does not work with high school athletes.
Tennessee, meanwhile, had just switched from Nike to adidas.
On July 22, 2026, in front of a packed room at Baylor's Probasco Academic Center and thousands more on a livestream, Georges turned to his younger sister Stacey and let her pick up the hat. She picked orange.
Allez Tennessee.
His uncle had told Rivals weeks earlier what the family said all along: there is an opportunity here for him to get ahead in life, but that is not the main thing.
The gear tells its own story
Look at the pictures again.
The commitment ceremony. The Friday Night Phenom tee under the orange hat. Then the game shots — Baylor red, rain coming sideways, silver helmet, and a slime green Hexa-Flow hanging off the facemask with PHENOM printed down the strap.
That is not a photoshoot. That is a kid who picked his gear before anybody was paying him seven figures to pick anything.
The mouthguard is the Hexa-Flow 4.0 in Slime Green — $19.99. Ready-to-wear, no boil. Loop-closure strap that locks flat to the facemask without clips. Hexa-Flow breathing channel so you can actually breathe in the fourth quarter of a rain game. Lip protection with a shard-textured grip pattern. Meets NFHS, NCAA, and SFIA standards. Thirteen team colors, adult and youth, one size fits most, works with or without braces.
The cleats are Quantum Carbon Gold Rush — Black & Gold and White & Gold, both $99.99. Low-cut, 9.4 ounces, carbon plate underfoot. Built for skill-position players who need to plant and go, sized from youth 1 through adult.
Pair them with the Quantum Fierce Padded Gloves in Gold Rush Black or Gold Rush White, $49.99, and that is the whole loadout.
He is not slowing down
This week, ESPN put Baylor's season opener against Brentwood Academy on national television — a rematch of last year's state championship.
Georges went for roughly 243 yards from scrimmage and three touchdowns, all of them in the fourth quarter, in a 38-20 win. Rivals called it a takeover in real time. MaxPreps called him a man possessed.
He does not enroll at Tennessee until 2027.
What it means
Every kid who has ever been told the running back position does not matter anymore should sit with what just happened.
A French-speaking linebacker from a Montreal suburb moved to a state he had never lived in, learned a language, carried a football better than anyone in America, and reset the market for his entire position in three seasons.
The money is the headline. The work is the story.
Phenom Elite® — For the Next Generation.
Note: NIL and revenue-share figures in college football are not publicly disclosed by schools. Contract terms referenced here come from reporting by On3, Hayes Fawcett, and outlets citing sources with knowledge of the negotiation, and should be treated as reported rather than confirmed. Phenom Elite is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the University of Tennessee or Baylor School.