Colton Nussmeier was denied eligibility to play his senior season of high school football at Denton Ryan. He will now be forced to return to Marcus, the team that essentially blocked his transfer in the first place.
This decision stems from a broken system in Texas.
A singular high school football coach holds a lot of power in whether or not an athlete is ruled eligible at his new program. And it just so happens to be the same coach who is losing his player to another school.
Who is Colton Nussmeier?
Colton Nussmeier is the little brother of former LSU and current Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Garrett Nussmeier and the son of current New Orleans Saints offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier. He is rated as a four-star quarterback prospect in the recruiting Class of 2027.
The 6-foot-3.5, 195-pound signal-caller ranks as the No. 12 player at his position, one of the top 35 players in the Lone Star State and one of the top 200 players in the country with 22 Division-I scholarship offers. Georgia ultimately received his commitment at the beginning of June. It seems like he is locked in on the Bulldogs.
Nussmeier burst onto the scene as a sophomore at Marcus High School in 2024 when he threw for 1,939 yards and 16 touchdowns with only three interceptions. The towering southpaw threw for 1,390 yards and 12 touchdowns with only one interception in 2025 before a knee injury ended his junior season early after just eight games.
Marcus High School (Flower Mound) serves approximately 3,000 students in Grades 9-12. The Marauders compete in Class 6A. Despite the talented arm at quarterback, they finished at 5-4 last season. They went 6-4 in the year prior. Not great.
Texas high school football transfers are denied eligibility for athletic purposes.
Colton Nussmeier announced his decision to leave Flower Mound Marcus in April. He transferred to Denton Ryan for his senior season. The Raiders are one of the best high school football programs in Texas. They went 12-2 in 2025.
However, Nussmeier was ruled ineligible to play at Denton Ryan by the District Executive Committee back in June. He immediately appealed the decision to the University Interscholastic League. The UIL voted 4-1 against his appeal on Thursday.
Here is where things get messy.
The original District Executive Committee vote actually ended in a tie at 3-3. As a result, the ruling is then deferred back to the Prior Athletic Participation Form. The head coach at Marcus checked on the form that Nussmeier only transferred for athletic reasons. High school athletes are not allowed to transfer for athletic purposes in the Lone State State.
As a result, because of the box checked by his former coach, Nussmeier was denied eligibility. The UIL upheld the ruling even though the Nussmeier family contends that they moved for family reasons. They signed a lease on a house in Denton in April. They are in the process of selling their home in Flower Mound.
Doesn’t matter. The UIL ruling is final. Nussmeier is not allowed to play for Denton Ryan.
Instead, he can either leave the state of Texas all together or return to Marcus to play for the same coach that effectively caused his eligibility to be denied in the first place. Those are his only two options.