won the ASUN Rookie of the Year award.
After sitting out her sophomore season due to an injury, Merkle transferred to Penn State where she continued to put up similar numbers against stiff competition in the Big Ten. While the Nittany Lions struggled, going 10-19, Merkle had a solid season and was an All-Big Ten honorable mention selection.
There weren’t many true post players in the portal this year, so Merkle was coveted as someone who could score in the paint, rebound and protect the rim at a high level.
In early April she signed with Maryland.
What did Merkle sign?
Merkle signed something commonly referred to as a financial agreement, a source confirmed, which is what all transfers are asked to sign when they go to a new school.
The thing is, these financial agreements are a bit different from what high school recruits used to sign when they committed to colleges — a National Letter of Intent. NLIs don’t exist anymore though after the NCAA eliminated them in October, ending the program that began in 1964.
An NLI was a formal and binding agreement between a player and the program they were choosing to attend. They were hard to get out of.
The new financial agreements are anything but that. The loopholes are easy to exploit.
One Power 4 assistant coach put it this way: “You can get out of a financial agreement anytime now as long as you haven’t stepped on campus and started getting aid… These are basically verbal commitments.”
The NLI was eliminated as the NCAA anticipates more changes from the House settlement, which will pave the way for schools to share revenue directly with players.
One agent referred to the financial agreements as “just MOUs” or memorandums of understanding, another form of a non-binding agreement.
“Financial aid agreement basically means nothing until you physically attend a class,” another Power 4 assistant coach said.
A source familiar with Merkle’s situation confirmed to SB Nation that, aside from her visit during her recruitment, she never stepped on campus and never enrolled in classes in College Park.
Once a player signs a financial agreement with a school, other programs are supposed to be prohibited from communicating with them about recruiting, according to NCAA guidelines
