Last time, that player might have started as an undecided. Which means he'd go back to undecided unless another coach had put enough money on him. In your previous cases, that coach would have been you, and he thought you were the bee's knees, and signed.
If the player started out considering 1-3 sims, but a D1 coach came along and "knocked off" the three sims, the opening effort from those sims is still there. When the D1 coach gave out all his scholarships, he dropped off the player's list, but the sim(s) effort was still there. You'd have needed to put enough effort in to show up on the list with the sim(s) -- or knock them off, too. Keep in mind if the D1 didn't knock the sims off right away, they'd have put in more effort the longer they were on him, making him more expensive for you to elbow in on.
That's my guess as to what happened given the information above. I don't know exactly how much of your effort landed, though, so maybe there's more here, but to me, that may be it.