We have talked about this topic off and on over the years I have been on this board. While most of those discussions here involve women’s sports or high academic recruiting in general, here is a pretty comprehensive treatment of the problem. While this obviously deals with the 300 pound gorilla of college sports (FBS football), I think it is an important read for parents and recruits going though the process in any sport.
Obviously I am horrified. Unfortunately, the high performing players being offered these scholarships I assume are the most likely to be uneducated about the whole process. It is a game of musical chairs and if you do not ask the right questions, you do not know where you stand. We went into the recruiting process knowing that we could not chase merit, like we did with DS and D was not going to be offered FA. It stunk because while we could afford to be full pay, I obviously would rather not but we could not chase merit $ if D was going to apply to schools that challenged her academically and wanted her to play.
Well you can see why this happens. The sophomores and juniors want to collect multiple offers and choose the righ school and the right team. A coach would have to give out 5 offers for every position if he only has a 1 in 5 chance that this QB or lineman will pick State U. The kid thinks “oh, I should collect 10 offers because some will fall away.” And the cycle continues. The letters have no binding value, it’s more of a ‘you are on our list’ thing.
I really don’t understand the ‘can I commit NOW’ suggestions. The only real commitment is signing the NLI. The coaches can’t give out the NLIs until the signing day. Getting an OV is more of a commitment than a piece of paper. The school can only offer so many of those and the athlete can only go on 5. If the recruit has a piece of paper but has not received an OV offer, I’d say the verbal commitment is not that strong.
I just watched a Netflix series that was really interesting. QB1 follows 3 highly ranked high school quarterbacks through ther senior years. Two seasons so far. Some have committed, some are still thinking about it. These kids are really in a different world than our high school athletes-or at least my kid! In the first year, one student has transfered from a CA high school to Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas (Snoop Dog’s son did this too). The facilities are nicer than many colleges. He appears to have little interest in school. The kids fly to games around the country, their parents think they are gods and they all drive very nice cars to school every day. The second year had a QB from St. John Bosco, which is a school in the same conference my kids were in in CA. This conference is a QB factory (Carson Palmer, Mark Sanchez, many other USC quarterbacks) and the whole focus of the high school teams is to get them into college on the way to the NFL. It’s just a whole different world.
And this is why you see some head scratchers about commitments that kids post on social media. Because they got a “post it on Twitter” offer and not a real offer. When I learned that a year or 2 ago it explained a lot.
S had a few offers (wrestling) but unless you have talked to me personally you don’t know who they are. S made one post on social media, and that was when he committed. I know everyone does it for basketball and football, but I still think it is tacky, especially since it doesn’t mean much.
dadof4kids…I know everyone does it for basketball and football, but I still think it is tacky, especially since it doesn’t mean much.
Agreed! That is my feeling about posting these early commits on social media. I also feel it is a bit tacky and is often for bragging reasons especially as it may not mean much. There has been much debate on CC about early commits and I understand that the high end academics, women’s sports & Ivy Leagues are a little different animal but I don’t think posting early commits that are not an official offer is a good thing.
Having known a few kids who were caught in the glare of big time recruiting, I think one of the reasons for the early commitments being made and publicized is because the kids, at least in football, are subject to a lot of media scrutiny from those who cover this topic. Four of my son’s friends were very highly recruited (one 5 star, 3 4 stars) and the level of interest in them beginning their freshman year in high school was ridiculous. They were interviewed regularly beginning their sophomore season about how the recruiting process was going, what schools they liked/didn’t like, when they planned on committing, what camps they were going to attend, etc. Two committed before the camp season following their sophomore year. Neither ended up signing with the school they initially committed to. One switched his commitment because his dream school offered early during his senior year. The other flipped because of a change of coordinators and a concern that the new coach’s style would not prepare him for a shot at the next level. The other two stayed uncommitted until very late in the process senior year. All four played at the absolute tippy top of the sport, each appearing in at least one college football playoff.
Another underappreciated factor imho, is that a lot of fans of various teams will reach out to these kids on social media and try and convince them that Bama, Clemson, OSU, Georgia, etc is the place for them. One of my son’s friends actually set up a separate twitter/facebook/snap chat/whatever because his regular accounts were being flooded with recruiting stuff. It is really a lot to put on 15/16 year old kids. “Committing” early puts the brakes on much of that, as the mob moves on to the next flavor of the month among the top uncommitted kids on the various recruiting sites.
I don’t know if there is a good or bad way to handle recruiting at that level. Honestly, for the four kids I am talking about, I am very confident that none of them enjoyed the recruiting process at all. Lower down the food chain there may be some chest pounding being done when offers/commitments are publicized, although even at my son’s far less exulted level he got tired of answering the same questions about camps/offers, etc from stringers from Rivals, 247 and the like by the time his senior summer rolled around. It is a huge machine, and the kids are really just the fuel that feeds it.
@twoinanddone, interesting point about QB1 and the completely fluid nature of big time college football. Three of the six QBs featured ended up at big time programs (Martell to OSU and Fromm to Georgia from season one and Fields to Georgia in season two). Two of those have already transferred from the school where they initially signed. Fields from Georgia to OSU, and then Martell from OSU to Miami.
Glad this thread was posted. I believe this is becoming a larger problem at all levels. I have two D who both used their sport as the “hook” for top ten academic ( no money) institutions (35 act 4.0 kids). The promise to D1 was rock solid and went through and although D2 is actually the better athlete and at the very top of her college team, the promise was much weaker. It did go through. This year at D1s school a teammates sister was greenlighted and then retracted on the the last day before ED (due presumably to numbers). A commitment should be a commitment. Kids should be given a reasonable amount of time to decide (2-4 weeks) and then it should be binding on both sides. Too much at stake both financially and or academically for these shenanigans.
The two Power 5 programs with the fewest offers distributed since 2012 are private, academically rigorous institutions:
Stanford (76 offers per year) and Northwestern (93).
@publisher, exactly right. There is a lot more going on administratively to get a kid admittable at Stanford than Oregon, and those numbers a re a reflection of that imho. Although it is worth noting that even Stanford is sending out at least three times as many offers as the max allowable scholarships (25) in any given year.
Also from the Sports Illustrated article is the following list of 22 Power 5 schools which have made the most (Univ. of Tennessee) to the least (Northwestern University) football scholarship offers since 2012:
Tennessee
Ole Miss
Nebraska
WVU
Miami
UNC
Rutgers
Missouri
Maryland
Virginia
Georgia
Wisconsin
Duke
Notre Dame
Oklahoma
LSU
UCLA
Georgia Tech
USC
Baylor
Kansas State
Northwestern University
Obviously many Power 5 schools are not included on this list. But it is still informative.
the NCAA is a complete joke of an organization; there are many easy no cost fixes to this but it would require pushing back against coaches . NCAA in almost every one of these types of stories always represents student athletes last, and $$$ and power first.
I don’t know the solution either, but the “offer” and “commitment” don’t really mean much at least in football. This isn’t a good situation for the teams or the players.
Is this very common outside of football and men’s basketball? I see it a bit in wrestling, but usually if there is a decommit there is an obvious reason, like a coaching change or a different kid gets recruited that the original committed athlete knows he can’t beat for a spot. I haven’t really seen the fake offers, although I suppose everyone is still trying to recruit a better athlete up to the end, and if that better athlete gets recruited you are going to be given the message that you probably should move on.
I didn’t really drill down on S’s offers except for the 2 he was really interested in at the end, and they were both real offers. I’m not sure how many of the “Twitter only” offers are given. When we met with the coach at his ultimate program, there were 2 lists on the whiteboard. Guys who were committed, and targets. At the end of the meeting, the coach erased his name from the target list and put him on the committed list. Given the size of the lists, I’m pretty sure at least that coach doesn’t give fake offers. I was surprised his list was that short.
In girls soccer the verbal offers are almost always honored. 1) they are usually only “fractional” scholarships so the risk reward is not as great and almost no one gets a full scholarship; also, parents post to a highly tracked website so if a coach starts pulling offers s/he will be outed. (that is different than a 9th grader committing to Princeton but unable to hit a test score that kid was told they needed and that kid goes somewhere else). Also girls soccer is a rich kids sport so for example for UNC it is well known if one is not a national team player they get near zero scholarship.
As a result girls soccer rosters are huge (since the 14 full scholarships can be carved up any way the coach wants) - Typically there are 30 kids on D1 rosters when most teams only play 15 kids. Soccer offers tend to be “exploding” meaning there’s some time limit for accepting. the idea of having unlimited non-binding verbal offers with no deadline as it appears D1 football does is insane. But again I can’t figure out what the NCAA actually does to protect ‘student athletes’. Ideally there’d be a website/clearing house tracking these offers. In soccer, a parent told me of their kid being invited to a camp but the parent looked at the unofficial website and saw an already committed goalkeeper for the same class so she got really pissed. (you don’t want two goalies in the same class if you want to play)
this could easily be fixed if only in writing offers were binding in any way and the player had 60 days to accept it and these offers could be given out at any age.
What can be binding? If the student doesn’t go to State U then he can’t play for another school? State U has to admit the student (who committed as a sophomore?) AND he gets a spot on the team and a full scholarship even if he never performs on the field or in the classroom as a high school junior or senior?
There is nothing binding until the NLI, and the NCAA controls that (Nov of senior year).
This is not new. In 1979 my brother had a teammate who was a top recruit. In the graduation program it listed about 12 schools as having offered him a scholarship. My brother said there were dozens more, that all he had to do was to get his coach to relay his interest to any coach in the country. It was like the scene in The Blindside where all the coaches lined up to beg Ohre to play for them.
If Stanford has to offer to 100 kids to fill 25 spots, I can understand why Texas has to offer to 200 or 300 because it is competing with other Big 12 and SEC and Big 10 schools.
@twoinanddone the coaches at the top programs benefit from the current system. If offers were binding at whatever age the kid was offered that would end this problem. coaches would have to live with busts. The current system encourages over recruiting and recruiting through signing day. I can’t imagine this benefits the kids much.
I think with the contact periods and signing dates the NCAA tries to protect the student to a degree. I think most coaches at the top football level are over offering but also being up front, until the NLI is sent to the player it is non-binding and as such there doesn’t really need to be a restriction on how many offers can be made or when, it all works itself out in the end.
Take Michigan for example. Last month they offered a 7th grade quarterback. There is 5 years before a real offer can be made, the NLI but in the meantime the kid gets his name in front of other coaches, his amount of interest in the next couple years from big programs goes up, the rating services look at him closer; overall a lot of upside for him. Just this week Michigan essentially pulled an offer from a kid a day before signing day. The coaches told him the offer was contingent on getting his grades up, he did, and now they told him they had to go with another recruit at a different position so he still has his offer, he just needs to go to prep school for a year. This is the kind of thing that is bad for the kid but he knew the offer was “soft” but it is also bad for Michigan as future recruits are now completely aware how easily an offer can get pulled and may hurt the team in the long run. This player will end up with a scholarship and play FBS football, probably at a school more in his academic wheelhouse and Michigan is suffering some bad press, things work themselves out in the end.
But how can the offers be binding ‘at whatever point?’ An offer to a sophomore cannot be binding. An offer to a junior cannot be permanent. If there isn’t discussion of commitments and offers before there can actually BE a binding offer, there would be a big scrum in October of senior year.
There is a pretty big list of 15 and 16 year old who have decommitted, which I think shows that 15 is too young to commit at all. I like the current system of the NLI being the only true commitment. Before that, you have to trust each other.
NCAA should look out for the kids, not the coaches, NCAA simply changes the bylaws that allow binding written commitments at younger ages, they can stipulate GPAs and test scores but they can’t pull an offer because of inadequate athletic growth/performance. There is basically no one looking out for the kids.
