Aaron Moorehead Tweets About a Subtlety of the Recruiting Process

As a college football fan, and person that writes about a college football team, a great thing about Twitter as a medium is the behind the scenes glimpses of Beamer Co. the prospects, players, and coaches provide. Early this morning Aaron Moorehead shared some opinions on the recruiting process, specifically the concept of a non-committable offer.

As a college coach it's 100% irresponsible to tell a kid he's offered if you aren't willing to take his commitment on the spot.— Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685) June 21, 2014

The recruiting process is so flawed. Coaches lie to kids and kids lie to coaches all day long. It's makes it hard to ever know the truth— Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685) June 21, 2014

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of coaches & kids who do it the right way but the ones who don't make the process awful for everyone— Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685) June 21, 2014

When I first learned about the idea of a non-committable scholarship offer I was confused. Up until that point, as I understood it, a scholarship offer was an invitation to join a program. Acceptance by the offering school was implicit, even though it wouldn't be binding until national signing day. That doesn't seem to always be the case.

Mark Richt had this to say about the topic in February of 2011.

"That's kind of what generated that whole 'Dream Team' idea," he said. "That it was one of those years in the state where we thought there was some elite players. One of the hardest things for us to do is to evaluate and nail down who you're going to go after, especially in our own state. A lot of the out of state teams will just come in and just offer like mad. They'll come in and just offer like candy. Quite frankly I'm not going to name names of schools, but a lot of them will do that just to get in the fight and if the kid commits too soon and they're not sure they want, they'll just tell them that's not a committable offer. Whatever the heck that means? If we offer a kid in our state and he says he's coming, we want to take him, OK? Sometimes we're a little bit slower to offer maybe than some out of state schools. Sometimes that might hurt a kid's feelings. Sometimes that might hurt a coach's feelings. That's not our intention. Our intention is to have integrity when we offer a kid and be able to follow through."

In May of 2013, Nick Saban gave some insight as to why not all Alabama scholarship offers are committable until he can see the prospect workout in person..

"It is our philosophy at certain positions that we really like to learn a lot about players and one of the best ways to learn about a player is when they come and visit you, because you're limited in terms of the contact you can have with them off-campus," Saban said. "To get some of them to come here in the summer I think is a really big tool in evaluation as well as an opportunity to get to know guys, to see if they have the right character and attitude to fit in your program."

This past May, rising senior defensive end Sterling Johnson (4-star, 247Sports Composite) was blindsided when he tried to commit to Tennessee.

After deciding he wanted to play college football at Tennessee, the Clayton Cleveland High junior called the Volunteers on Tuesday to share the news that he was excited to be joining the program. But during the ensuing discussion, Johnson learned that Tennessee coach Butch Jones would evaluate him again if he went to the Tennessee football camp during the summer and might make an official offer then. Johnson promptly decided to attend Clemson instead.

"They (Tennessee) dropped it on me out of the blue," Johnson said. "Never a hint of this. I told them a month ago that they were my leader, and they seemed excited about me coming then."

Put simply, a non-committable scholarship offer is an oxymoron. It's a vehicle for a coach / program to express strong interest in a prospect; an opportunity to earn a committable offer.

It's easy to understand why some coaches employ this approach. Both scholarships and time are limited resources. It's an effective means to cast a wide net (perhaps early in the process), and be selective about who comes aboard. It's an aggressive strategy, but if a program is honest with a recruit about where he stands and what type of offer he has, not that shady of one. It becomes something more deplorable when it's a surprise to a prospect. As was the case with Sterling Johnson, or Adrian Baker (3-star, 247Sports Composite).