I ran across this article earlier and felt that it would be a great topic to discuss on here.
In short, some colleges are pushing for an earlier signing period (Juniors signing a LOI) and official visits being taken during the Junior year. Below is Urban Meyer's thoughts on the issue.
Are you for this, against it, or feel that there should be some reform but not a total reboot?
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This seems like a bad idea... Get recruits locked into a LOI a year in advance? What happens if/when the coach gets fired or leaves for another job. Those kids are screwed.
I like official visits during Junior year, i would like to see official offers only, if a coach gives you an offer and you accept right then and there the school is stuck with you.
This is a tough call. Schools get a commit and think they have a position covered; then the kid changes his mind before LOI date and the school is screwed. Kid makes a commit and things change at the school and the kid is stuck. He still gets a free education and can play football; so he's not really screwed. I like the fact that an early commit makes the kids really think about their decision. I think you could get around the coaching change situation by allowing the kid to reopen in certain situations.
I have been a proponent of this for a long time. Start the process a little earlier, and you'll get coaches only making more serious offers, rather than the current "shotgun" approach that gets kids left out when they think the big boys want them but really don't.
It's easy to protect everyone, too. LOI can be voided by the recruit if the coach changes, an NCAA investigation is initiated, or the school drops their intended major. LOI can be voided by the school if the recruit gets in trouble with the law or fails to qualify. Done and done.
That makes way too much sense for the NCAA to put into effect.
Start the process a little earlier, and you'll get coaches only making more serious offers, rather than the current "shotgun" approach that gets kids left out when they think the big boys want them but really don't.
There. That's the thing. If you do the early signing period right you can make this super important point work. If you do it wrong, it's a bad deal for the players.
This is the important part. You have to allow players to be able to void the LOI for legitimate reasons if you're going to open it up for an early signing period. In fact, they should allow kids to void their LOIs right now as it is, but that's a whole other ballgame.
If they don't, then this is far too significantly weighted towards and will be outright abused by the schools.
What if the student changes his intended major...at the last minute...to something your school doesn't offer? I predict we'd see a lot of very unique degrees pop up at big football schools to exploit that loophole.
"Well, I was very committed to playing football at Tech, but then I realized that my true calling is Oblong Stuffed Animal Hide studies and Tech just doesn't offer that degree. Alabama, on the other hand, has the top program in the country..."
I suppose that depends on the policies of the individual university regarding changes of major and transfers, but to avoid that loophole, the student can change their major once enrolled, therefore they have to transfer.
The benefit, as I see it, of an early signing period is it prevents hasty decisions. The school has to truly commit to the recruit by offering a signable LOI. The recruit will not jump into a decision too quickly, realizing there are no more soft commits. Either you sign on the dotted line or you wait until you're sure. There will be fewer offers going out from the coaches, which de-escalates the arms race of collecting offers, so you know that if you have an offer, it's legit, and if you don't get an offer, you're not likely to get one.
I can see the good and the bad of both sides. In some cases, it's hard to see a player's true potential until his junior or senior season, though, so what happens to those kids who are "late bloomers"?
A few kids are naturally bigger and stronger when they are in 9th&10th grades (where an early signing period would benefit), but a majority of kids don't develops until later on (early signing period wouldn't benefit).
I think the problem solves itself. Rather than sending out 150 "offers" (which do not exist because no true, committable offer can be sent until Aug. 1 of the senior year in the current scheme) to underclassmen, coaches will be more hesitant to send out an offer until they're sure a kid merits one. You know you're going to have your superstars that you can see a mile away, but those are only a few. Offers will start to go out to juniors, but there won't be as many; you won't see Harbaugh calling every kid in America with an "offer." He'll have to choose. Doing this will leave some room in every class, because coaches won't want to miss out. Offers can go out at any point after the early period, the way I'm thinking of it, or at least during the current "normal" offer period. So in all likelihood, all this would do is get the kids that are ready to sign early to do so, make the coaches more likely to be judicious with their offers, and take away most of the ambiguity and games that get played currently.
That makes sense.
I have another thought. Would this affect the "camping crisis" that we've seen the past few summers? Would it explode into something uncontrollable or would schools not have as many?
Hard to say. I have to imagine we're very near, if not already at, the saturation point for camps. They require a lot of time and money. Outside of Michigan, Texas, Bama, and a few others, schools just don't have the cash to keep up in that arms race. An early period may increase the significance of each camp, but I don't know that I would be confident in any prediction about the number or scope of the camps themselves.
Multi-year scholarships should be made mandatory, as well, with the only way to revoke a scholarship being due to performance in the classroom.
Offers should be binding for the school once a kid commits. Kids should not be bound to the team until they get to campus. That's just my "the kids are the important ones here, and football is secondary" opinion.
I'm for it. My thought: if you commit, you sign. No more of this soft verbal crap.
However, there need to be rule changes on the other side as well. No more uncommittable offers, oversigning classes, UNC, if a coach leaves/gets fired you are released from your commitment, etc.
I see what you did there....
It's a bad idea for kids to make life decisions too soon.
I recall that Frank was in favor of an early signing period.
Don't have a source, it was what he said during various interviews when it came up a few years ago.
From a purely football perspective this makes sense. However, if I had to decide by my junior year of high school what College I would be going to, I would have gone to Nebraska for Chemistry. I even felt certain that was what I was going to do at the time even. My senior year I changed my mind on the Major I wanted to try for and obviously what school I wanted to go to... twice actually. I also strongly considered going to Indiana State at one point before finally choosing VT.
People give recruits a lot of shit for changing their minds after giving a verbal, but seem to forget what it was like being a 17-18 year old trying to make such decisions.