I don’t think there can be a system where offers become permanent much before the early signing date. Remember, all these kids have to be at least academic qualifiers, let alone meet higher standards set by particular universities, some of whom add quite a bit of money to the NCAA pot (Notre Dame, Duke basketball, etc). That seems to be a big enough problem with the late signing date in February of senior year, and every cycle there are a number of high profile recruits who either don’t sign or are ruled ineligible in the summer. The earlier you move the date when an offer becomes “solid”, the greater that number will be. The programs certainly don’t want that. Plus, what do you do with kids who are injured? You wanna call Nick Saban and say sorry, but you can’t really sign a qb in this class because the kid you offered two years ago developed tendinitis and can’t throw the ball more than ten times before his arm falls of? On the recruit side, what do you do when a high profile kid from the class ahead of you commits, or transfers in? What about when there are coaching changes? There are just so many variables that any type of restriction would require so many caveats as to almost be meaningless.
That is not to say that I don’t think that moving the date back when offers can be extended might work. The article notes that the NCAA tabled a proposal to adopt a rule which seems similar to what it did adopt for lacrosse. It could be that the NCAA wants to see how that rule works in the relatively smaller world of lacrosse recruiting before they impose it on the money making sports. We will have to see.
Maybe I am just a cynic, but I am not so sure the NCAA cares that much. The recruiting industry, and the breathless reporting about this or that kid’s top ten school list, or some other kid switching his commitment because a coach left, certainly helps keep NCAA football and basketball in the news even out of season, something I am sure the NCAA is happy about. Sure, when things get ridiculously out of hand, like the way grey shirting (deferring a kid’s scholarship one cycle) was being run in the SEC, the NCAA will harrumph and push through some rules to avoid the bad press. But grey shirting was going on along time before Les Miles pulled a kid out of class and told him he didn’t have a scholarship anymore. It wasn’t until that happened though that the process started to generate a lot of bad press. I think the same is true about the current deck shuffling that goes on during each recruiting cycle. Right now I bet the NCAA thinks it helps them make money. If that changes, the rules probably will as well.
the NCAA could limit the offer letters to 100 per school, restrict them to only second semester juniors, require an OV to accompany them. I think that would hurt the recruits more. Those 100 letters would go to top recruits and the next level would still be waiting for the top recruits to decide where they want to go.
If the recruits have no idea which teams are interested in them as sophomores and juniors, they don’t know which camps to go to. If the kid in the story who was dropped by LSU and picked up as the 25th scholarship might not have received that call if he hadn’t ‘committed’ to the soft offer.
I think was needs to be handled better is what each step means. What does the soft offer letter mean? When does the commitment become firm on both sides?
I think that the offers could be made permanent at any time. Coach wants to offer a 5th grader? Fine. Give him a written offer that has to be signed by the coach and the parents. But the coach has to live with that choice. It wouldn’t be that hard to put in some academic qualifiers, in reality except for Ivy and a few others the only academic hurdle is NCAA eligible for a kid good enough to be recruited that early. If both parties mutually agreed to terminate, that’s fine. In reality that would be a good out for the kids, probably less so for the coaches.
What you would see is very few offers going out to kids that aren’t either seniors or superstar juniors. An OFFER would actually be an OFFER, not just an expression of interest. I don’t think it would really change things all that much, at least after a relatively quick transition. But it would be a much more honest process. i.e., we plan on giving you an offer, but we still have to see how it all shakes out.
Maybe I was naive, but it all worked out for S. He pretty much just had a handshake agreement until he got his acceptance letter. But it was with a coach with a sterling reputation of treating kids right. If it was Sabin or Harbaugh, I would probably have kept him talking to other coaches right up until I had a paper signed by the coach in my hands. Honestly that is bad for everyone.
The contract wouldn’t be valid for anything. No money in the 5th grader’s contract, no way for parents to bind the student. What would the payment or penalty be to terminate?
The NCAA doesn’t allow any monetary contract until the NLI/Grant in Aid. The coach can’t promise admission to a school 5 -8 years from the date of the ‘contract’ (unlikely he’ll even be the coach at that time). There are no mutual promises in the contract.
What can be done is for the early offers to be stopped. None allowed. That doesn’t seem to be what either side wants.
Would it hurt to at least close all the loopholes and truly allow no contact/discussion before Junior year? I understand the argument that kids need to know which camps to go to, but maybe if they waited they would have a better list of colleges that were actually a good target both athletically and academically and kids wouldn’t need to go to so many camps.
I think this gets to the heart of it. The fact is that in football at the FBS level there are a heck of a lot more coaches who are like Harbaugh and Sabin than the opposite. Like it or not, Nick Saban, Urban Meyer and Les Miles changed the recruiting world 15 years ago when they turned the SEC into the dominant sporting conference in America. The days of a handshake agreement (or in my day, a conversation between a coach and a parent) being honored come signing day no matter what are well in the rear view mirror at most places at that level. Coaches are always trying to upgrade their roster, both before signing day and after, because if they don’t they are going to get fired quickly. There is way too much money involved.
So kids talk to a fair number of schools, because if they are paying attention at all they know that nothing is written in stone. Which creates more uncertainty in where a kid will land, which leads to more offers, etc, etc. I don’t think that part will ever really change because the schools are going to want to be able to kick a kid to the curb if a better option is available. That is just a fact.
Would prohibiting offers prior to junior year, or prohibiting offers until after an OV (another fix people discuss ocasionaly) fix some of this? Maybe. It would make it less gallingly ludicrous certainly. But kids are still going to get left at the altar every year.
I think we get hung up on the word offer, which can have very different definitions across different sports and schools. If offers were prohibited until junior year I don’t think anything would change since in today’s world, at least at the FBS level these offers are non-binding. If offers are prohibited it will just change the terminology that is used. Instead of an "offer being made to the 7th grade QB Harbaugh will call it “verified interest” or “potential recruit” or “future target”. The same message would be conveyed and the same confusion would occur with the athlete and family but it would “look like the NCAA cares”.
I am not familiar with LAX and the changes that have been made in that recruiting process but I imagine it looks much like my above thought. There is still contact happening, there are still “offers” made, they are just called something else and a discussion around not blasting the interest demonstrated by the school on social media. It looks like things have changed but I doubt they really have. If anything it probably causes more confusion for the athlete is school A has “expressed interest” but school B has not does that mean school B is just following the rules to the letter or they really are not interested?
No easy solution.
In Lax recruiting, the contact and visits to campus are very limited before junior year. There is NO recruiting talk between coaches and recruits, but there may be some between club/hs coaches and the college coaches. There are no campus tours of just the athletic departments.
Does this help the recruits? It doesn’t change much for the top recruits, those who have top coaches or contacts, who have siblings and uncles and parents who played and know the system. It makes the recruiting period much tighter, the fall of junior year really, and the shake out from the top tier programs to the next tier faster. But lax is a spring sport so a lot of this is happening in the fall when everyone has more time. This is harder for fall sports which either need to shift to the spring of junior year or spring of sophomore year.
I think it has pushed even more of the recruiting to camps, most of which are run by college coaches. At the camps, the coaches can’t talk recruiting, scholarships, or if the individual would be the ‘right fit’ for the team. There are showcase tournaments which almost requires the players to be on a top club team (the registration fills up in seconds, so only those clubs with a lot of power get in). All that costs money, so those who can afford to play club have a big advantage. My daughter was very lucky in that her club coach knew the ropes and we only paid about $700 for the year while the other club in town was $3-4k, and that didn’t guarantee you a spot on the tournament teams.
Too soon to know if this new system is better. IMO nothing has changed.