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."
"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).
Comments
This probably has to do with his frustration with tOSU slow playing Fullwood.
Solution: treat scholarships like job offers
Scholarships are binding for both sides UNLESS:
Edit #1:
The only idea I'm wrestling with is if schools should be able to give out more offers than position. Say VT has 10 scholarships available - should they be able to offer 15 players, but be forced to accept the first 10 that accept? Or should they only be able to offer 10 recruits?
Edit #2:
Maybe let colleges make written offers after the recruit's senior season ends? Either way, you get the idea.
The only thing I might change is the August 1 date. I say push that a bit earlier, but just the beginning of the summer after the prospect's junior year. That allows them to attend camps and get offers at those camps, rather than nearly running out the clock on their summer. I half-way agree with what Saban is saying, only in the sense that in many cases you want to see the prospect in person and get a sense of his personality yourself (i.e. the same thing as an interview), but before that has happened, you shouldn't be able to "offer" that prospect. Protections like you've listed are perfectly reasonable.
Valid point. I'm no NCAA expert, but I think students should be allowed to come to campus a few times before getting an offer. I suppose though if none of the campuses they visit give offers, then they kind of have to scramble.
I'd add: Mike London and Cavalier Football must cede the entire East Coast to Virginia Tech for recruiting purposes.
The manifest density addendum
They're not the ones waxing us for all the elite talent. It used to just be the two of us, but we've been so lax over the last decade or so that many, many elite programs regularly come in and cherry pick their desired recruits while we scuffle beneath them, obsessed with only beating UVa for their services. A five star recruit comes along, we talk about him, immediately lose him to a 'big name' program, and the following chatter is all about how 'We prefer to coach up the unheralded diamonds in the rough' as a way to soothe the pain of being stepped on once again as the elite recruit flees the state. Until we change that, the rsults on field will not change.
A decade ago, most of our neighbors in the region were underwhelming when it came to football and recruiting. New coaches at the likes of South Carolina and Kentucky, have changed the landscape. At the same time, UT and Penn State have momentum again after some down years. Some things are just beyond our control. Once our on-field performance rebounds, the recruiting will as well. I am confident that these new offensive coaches of ours can get the job done, and the early indications are promising.
It's not at all about the UK's & SoCarolina's of the world. That totally misses the point. it is about OhState, Alabammer, etc. strolling into Va. and skimming off the cream of the crop, while we twiddle about pretending UVa is our only foe for Virginia recruits. As for thinking Scott Loeffler is the panacea - as long as we don't demand anything too much of him in the next 2-3 year rolling window - that is just as misinformed. The change needs to come from the top down. Mindset change - 180 degrees change. Those who choose to ignore it, can keep pushing out expectations 2-3 years in the future, then when we're 2-3 years in the future, push them out 2-3 more years, so there is never accountability. That's been the false claim for over a decade now. Keep pretending we're 2-3 years from glory, so we don't have to hold anyone accountable now and face the hard truths.
PREACH IT BROTHA
Do you have a suggestion or are you simply stating you think the old way should be changed for... what?
That's what the coaches get paid 6-7 figures for.... :-)
I'm trying to figure out what this August 1st (or whatever date) would do for the Luther Maddy's, Calvin Cline's and Dadi Nicolas' of the world, those who were apparently not on the radar prior to their senior seasons in high school. Will it have any effect?
There's nothing that says a school MUST give offers at that point, guys can be offered later in the process. It's just saying that we should de-escalate the arms race of trying to find the slickest looking 12-year-old and give them a non-committable offer. The way things are going is just ridiculous. I think it would be nice to limit contact with recruits prior to their junior year (i.e. no recruiting before then) and then offers can come only after a certain starting point. It would be interesting to consider the effects of the late offers in this process. Especially someone like Cline, who got offered after NLI day, but that only happened because VT ended up with an available scholarship. That could still happen here, depending on who accepts offers and when.
I like the idea of the written offer no sooner than August 1 before a student's senior year, but let the recruit sign the LOI when the recruit accepts the offer, instead of making "commitments", anytime up until national signing day, or until the school withdraws the offer in writing. This way if a school is offering multiple players for limited scholarships they can withdraw the offer to the recruits who waited too long to accept, but are unable to withdraw an offer a player accepts before the school can withdraw it in writing.
Then evaluate him first before you offer him a scholarship.
I get that Saban is in the best position to defend this behavior, but it doesn't make him any less of a shitty person.
This is exactly what I was thinking. How often have we heard Beamer & co. say that they want to see the kid in camp before they'll offer a scholarship, even after seemingly the rest of the country has already offered? People are dumb.
Well, that's a double-edged sword like a lot of things. Offering a kid just because he has everyone else's offer wouldn't be very confidence-inspiring as a fan or player. There are exceptions to this, of course, but IMO it makes the offering school appear to be
Lacking
Originality
Leadership
Understanding
Vitality &
Ability
With the success VT has found with walk-ons and 2-3 star recruits, if Beamer & Co. decide to pass on a kid, I trust them in that decision.
That misses the point. The point was NOT about offering a recruit just because 'everyone else' offers him. It was about being more aggressive - LIKE 'everyone else' - in researching the recruit and not being so passive about waiting for him to come to you, at your camp. Recruits have lots of offers for lots of camps. When we're the ones in the back of the crowd, not promoting ourselves as hard as those in the front row, the kids will be gone by the time we look around and claim - 'We didn't want him that much anyway, he wasn't our kind of player'.
Exactly. Still, I'm all in favor of Beamer and his staff offering prospects when they're good and ready to offer - if that means seeing a kid at camp, or seeing how the first few games of his senior season go, so be it. I'll never fault our coaching staff for not aggressively pursuing a guy they weren't 100% sure about, as frustrating as it is when players commit elsewhere.
Or - gasp! - they could take a page from the rest of the nation and recruit harder earlier. Until someone explains exactly what magical pixie dust we sprinkle on recruits that lets their lights shine only when at one of our camps, I'll use rational thought and believe we're too passive in laying back and expecting recruits to recruit us by coming to camp to attain our interest. It's not 1968, and we're not Alabammer, Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Texas. Times change. Some people still believe we never should.
It's not magical pixie dust, it's a controlled environment where coaches can see how each kid performs. The competition level is the same, the coaches can talk with the kids, coach them for a bit, and get a better idea of how a kid plays and could potentially fit into the program. There's no point wasting a bunch of time and energy recruiting a kid only to find out 6 months into the process that you actually don't want him in your program. And you're right, we're not a Bama or Oklahoma or a Texas. We can't throw around the weight of our history and tradition to cover up for a lack of a "committable" offer. Our coaches shoot it straight, and that's a selling point they can pitch to recruits.
Somewhat unrelated, but man I hope the new AD (and I don't think he does) doesn't has the same philosophy of failing to pay assistant coaches. Coach Moorehouse isn't going to go unnoticed on the national coaching search and I hope Whit and Frank make it worth his while to stick around in Blacksburg.
Based on what we've seen of Whit so far I'd say those days are finally in the rear view mirror.
Coach Moorehouse? We have a HBC as a WR coach? Or did you mean this guy:
Coach Milhouse...worth every penny
The problem with 'failing to pay assistant coaches' was never in football, it was ALWAYS a problem in basketball. Never in football. The assistants get paid well when Frank wants them to get paid well, and that has never, ever, been an issue for football assistants. Nor has been losing them elsewhere.
But isn't the "commitable offer" a two way street? As long as recruits and their families allow it to be done, it will. Fullwood went to OSU fully aware that his offer wasn't commitable. He could have told Meyer to stick the non commitable because he has many other commitable offers to choose from.
I agree, but if all offers were "committable", then shouldn't all commits be binding, as well?
In my opinion, there are so many non-committable offers out there because of all the recruits that change their mind, and snatch the rug from under the coaches. It's a cyclical problem.
Your question answers itself - the only schools that can get away with it are the ones that have so many blue chippers to choose from, it's just a matter of selecting the right ones.
Bama is a good example. They extend offers to 120 or so 4-5 star players a year. But if a lot of those are not commitable, it's a tactic that allows them to 'stable' a large amount of talent and then evaluate at their leisure.
This whole process needs to be overhauled. Moorehead is correct, if you make an offer, you better be prepared to take a commitment immediately after. An offer is an offer, it needs to be set in stone. The ONLY way I say an offer shouldn't be accepted is if a school reaches their quota. But even then, we shouldn't allow schools to offer more scholarships than they have to give out.
The process needs to be standardized, but it won't.
The problem offers set in stone is that many recruits are going to wait until the last minute to commit, no matter when you set the deadline. There would be a mad scramble on signing day to fill out your class because you had 5 scholarships waiting on top prospects to pick you or 3 other schools.
I think this is a lot less of a problem than it's made out to be. The biggest thing to change is to alter the wording of the "offer." Maybe change it to "Tryout Offer," "Invitation," or something since you can't really take that tool away from the schools. However you can take out some of the misleadingness since it really has evolved into the school's interest in pursueing a prospect.
I agree here 100% let the athlete know it is a tryout offer or preferred walk-on.. It sucks that these kids are being lied to that they have a scholarship offer and in all reality if they try to commit the coach backs away... The big programs go after everyone then bit by bit let go of players/ not contact them as much but the player still think he has the offer out there. Honestly I feel like an offer is anything now a days, its just worded differently or coaches are being sly about it.
Unfortunately this is a new reality of not only college athletics but also business. The idea that you can implicitly trust someone and give them the benefit of the doubt leaves you being taken for a ride. As this becomes more and more common place the recruits need to arm themselves and ask the questions and know which schools do it more than others so that they can make a better decision.
It's a 'new reality' as of the mid-1960's. This has been going on virtually forever. Why do some feel the need to pretend we're discussing Andy hardy & 'Deal ole Alma Mater'? This has happened for decades, it is not some recent change. When will people admit the fact that virtually every HS recruit thinks he is bound for NFL glory and that his pick of teams has no better option than him? meanwhile the team is playing multiple 5-stars against each other in attempt to recoup their best hand?
I'm actually very curious to how all of this got started. Whether it really is the coaches being slick and really using scholarship offer or if it's something lost in translation. For example the coaches calling the kid and telling him "We want to offer you a spot to work out for us" and the kid telling a reporter "I got an offer from ABC University today!" or the coach saying "Yeah, we offered So-and-So a chance to come to our camp this spring." Then it's marked as offer or scholarship offer on a website instead of what it actually is "Active Recruitment."
To me, it wouldn't matter. The coaches do this 100 times a year. The player and his family get one shot at this (or four, if you're Momma Fuller). The onus to communicate clearly is 100% on the shoulders of the coaches. Any misunderstanding is their responsibility.
This! Also in the above scenario, did the coach correct the kid when he thought he had an offer?
The system is perfectly set up for programs, like Bammer, who can play these kinds of games. It's not rocket science and could be tweaked to protect both the program and the student-athlete.
a) no contact whatsoever until junior year
b) no "offers" until august 1st of senior year. offers can only be passed out to students currently on track academically to qualify. it's a bit of a gray area and risky but rest assured this situation would fix itself in a few years. most programs will veer away from "risky" prospects regardless of football talent (because they could have to "settle" later if it doesn't work out) .. and student-athletes will eventually get the picture, get their academic shit straight, and keep it straight
c) an offer is only in written form and vetted through a clearinghouse or some third party to hold them accountable. at that point, an NLI can be signed at any time and is binding on both ends as long as the offer is still in place. an offer can be pulled at any time and can be triggered to be pulled by the signing of another's NLI. the student should be notified immediately when that happens.
pretty simple stuff if you ask me
I like a and b. With c, your asking for the NCAA to get in the middle of the recruiting process at each university. Ummm, No f-ing way do any of us want that.
So c is out. If a and b are the rules then you just have to have documentation that the NCAA can review later as they check compliance of programs like they already do (this is self policing which each program should be able to do properly - most SEC schools not included...).
NCAA already has a hand in recruiting via the clearinghouse. Doubt it would be that difficult.
Regardless, a written, legitimate, verifiable scholarship offer should be given to every recruit who gets an offer.
Why can't they track official offers and commits through the clearinghouse?
Because the clearinghouse can't even clear players on time and now you want them to keep track of offers. not being rude to you just the NCAA as a whole
This is exactly my point, why would we want that bureaucracy in the middle of our recruiting process? Yuuch!! and...NO!!
This seems like a topic for lawyers to discuss. Let's take it to the Supreme Court.
These are questions for wise men with skinny arms.
All this talk about commitable offers, non commitable offers, and tryout offers reminded me of Matt Walsh's most recent blog on dating, Dear Single Dudes: It's Time to Man Up
This was the exact analogy I thought of when I first read about 'non-committable offers' haha