An early signing period is one step closer to happening: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/dennis-dodd/24978192.
Pete Roussel of coachingsearch.com asked Beamer for his thoughts on the subject last April.
"I think the way that we recruit, when parents come in and we sit down on Sunday morning and their kid commits to you, I think it's pretty likely that commitment is going to happen. Whereas if a kid is by himself and we're flying him back home and the parents aren't involved, it's about a 50/50 shot. So the way we recruit, I don't particularly think we need an early signing period. My thoughts have changed on that over the years, but so has the way we recruit. I'm not sure there is a right time. If it's in August, then your vacation time is going to be cut short. If it's in December, then you're going to have to host a lot of official visits during the season. I think it's great for recruits to see a game, but you don't have time to show them around campus and spend time with them academically. I mean, on Sunday morning you're getting ready for the next game, so it's just not a great time for official visits. It just doesn't quite work out. I'd like to have it. I think if kids make up their mind and sign something, we could go work on someone else, but for Virginia Tech we don't need it as much now as we used to."
Comments
Not sure I understand the point Beamer is making. I would think an early signing period would be better for VT than not.
he seems to be saying that because our strategy is that we take that time to make sure we get in front of the parents that we have a higher success rate and therefore an early signing period is unnecessary for us. To which, my question then would be, does that mean that we are constantly coming in from behind other schools to win recruits? Do we need that extra time to sell ourselves and therefore an early signing period might mean recruits who we need more time with might otherwise already early commit to other programs before we get to their parents?
I hope not.
As I said, I would think an early signing period would be better for us. We sign the recruits as soon as possible and we know what kind of chances we can take chasing the more high profile recruits. That would make recruiting more stable for a program like ours, and not less.
all very interesting
If my boss asked me to do something during my "busy season" and I said that I just didn't have the time, then he would say "well, you better make time."
I would think that if this rule would to go into effect that Babcock would hire some "Official Recruiting Visit Specialists that could take care of the academic/tour side of things for campus (Guerry) with the coaches being able to sacrifice some time to do the football side of the tour. I could be wrong in the fact that there is really zero time available for these sorts of visits during the season, but just a throught.
I am guessing those official recruiticorn specialists would be 18-22 years old and be very well endowed with loose morals... ;)
aka the Lane Kiffin Liaison
If you offer a player a scholarship he should be able to sign on the spot. These offers must be formal and signed by the head coach (so there is no confusion). Coach's cannot retract offers unless the student's grades fall off, or the student is found in legal trouble. Students cannot retract their agreement unless their head coach, position coach or coordinator leave, the school drops their major, or the program is under NCAA investigation.
If you read between the lines, I think the coach is saying that he used to be in favor of locking kids in early since Tech would get in on some upper middle range talent in the years before our prominence who would commit or lean heavily to Tech only to lose them when big dogs started finalizing their headcounts in January. Now Tech is in a position where they are playing big boy recruitment and flipping some of their own, so his "perspective" has changed somewhat.