WWE Announces 'Campus Rush' College Recruitment Tour to Find New Superstars

WWE is in search of superstars of the future, and the company is hoping to find them on college campuses around the country.

On Tuesday, WWE announced it will go on a "multi-campus college athlete recruitment tour which will visit top NCAA Division I universities in search of the next generation of WWE Superstars" called "WWE Campus Rush" beginning Wednesday.

WWE will visit a total of eight schools from five conferences during the fall semester. The list of schools on the schedule was revealed Tuesday:

Multiple WWE Superstars will be a part of the tour including Big E, Bianca Belair, Omos, Madcap Moss and Raquel Rodriguez, all of whom have backgrounds in college athletics before they transitioned to professional wrestling. The superstars will "address student athletes at each tour stop and educate them about the global leader in sports entertainment."

"The talent pipeline from college sports to WWE has proven to be effective, as evidenced by current champions Roman Reigns and Bianca Belair, and we are looking forward to visiting major college campuses around the country to introduce ourselves in a new way," WWE Head of Talent Operations and Strategy James Kimball said.

The students will also learn about WWE's NIL program, which the company dubbed as "Next In Line," as well as other resources that would help them if they chose to pursue a career in wrestling. While WWE didn't say there will be in-ring tryouts as part of the tour, each stop will feature a competition between student-athletes to see who can cut the best WWE-style promo.

WWE's NIL program was launched in December and currently has partnerships with 25 athletes, three of which have joined WWE after their graduation and are training at the Performance Center in Orlando. Olympic gold-medal-winning wrestler Gable Steveson was the first student-athlete to sign an NIL deal with the company.

Earlier this year, WWE hosted tryouts for college athletes during WrestleMania week and again during SummerSlam week. Most notably, NBA star Dwight Howard participated in the tryout and said he wants to join WWE after his basketball career is over.

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