In college athletics, no aspect is as important as recruiting. It is the life blood of a program. For every major college program, hockey to football, off-season recruiting is as important as in season success.
But lately, something has been horribly wrong with this aspect of college athletics. Recruiting has become this uncontrollable monster with the booming of the internet age. There are literally dozens of sites dedicated to recruiting, but two of them, Rivals and Scout set the pace for the rest of the web. These sites are clustered with rankings, message boards, interviews, columns and everything else you could possibly imagine. They are all about young men who are just figuring out what that funny feeling they get when they see a pretty girl.
I do not know what is more disturbing, the fact that these sites exist, or that there was a demand for this. Something is rotten in college athletics, and it is the archaic way that potential student athletes are glamorized and while being coaxed into committing to State U. This current system of recruiting is damaging to both the reputation of the NCAA and the student athletes themselves. There is a way to fix this broken system, but sadly the NCAA does not have any interest in catching up with modern times.
Have an early signing period
This simple fix would relieve a lot of pressure on recruits that have already verbally committed to their dream schools. Most of these players are inundated with propaganda from other schools about flaws with the school that the player is committed to. If we allowed a recruit to either sign in August (before their senior year on the field) or December (after most have taken all of their official visits) a lot of this needless pressure would be non-existent.
I am especially in favor of the August date because of players that have verbally committed to a school could suffer a season/career ending injury in their final year of high school. Once a player is injured in their senior year of high school, the player cools off extremely quickly. I’ll even use myself as an example. Before my senior year started, I was contacted by schools like Toledo, Miami (OH), and even Iowa. They loved my junior tape and wanted to see a few games from my senior year. I sprained my ankle a few days before the opening game and while I played a few great games, the coaches all said the same thing, “We didn’t know you were that slow.” I actually had multiple coaches tell me that. When I told them that it was a sprained ankle, they did not really seem to care, they couldn’t get past that I was slower than they thought. While this is an example of a minor injury, it is something that is very real. I’ve talked to players who became “damaged goods” due to an injury their senior year, with several schools pulling their scholarship offers once they get the news. An early signing period would prevent these problems.
Give players a break with the coaching carousel
Each year dozens of coaches are fired in the two major college sports (football and basketball), most of the time it comes after the season, when a coach has already filled most of his recruiting class. If a player has signed with a college and the coach is fired, and they want to change schools, they currently have to sit out a year before becoming eligible again. I think this is complete nonsense. Players are told to pick a school based on your best fit of academics, social life, and athletics. Let’s not kid ourselves, 99% of the time the student’s priorities are not in that order.
Take the case of the best player in college basketball today, Kansas State’s Michael Beasley. Beasley, a unanimous “can’t miss” prospect from the Washington D.C. area had his pick of any college he wanted. What Beasley wanted was to play under the tutelage of Bob Huggins, unquestionably one of the best basketball coaches in America. Why else would a top national recruit decide to play in relative anonymity? He wanted to be a part of the emerging basketball factory that Huggins was creating at Kansas State. Huggins promptly left for West Virginia and Beasley was hung out to dry. With the NBA’s new draft eligibility rule (at least one year removed from high school) Beasley considered all of his options. Kansas State refused to let him out of his letter of intent, so after considering playing professionally in Europe for a year, he decided to stick with Kansas State and is averaging 25.1 points and 12.4 rebounds a game … well on his way to winning national player of the year honors.
If a coach leaves a school, a player should be able to transfer without any penalty. A lot of these kids pick schools based on their trust for the head coach. A head coach’s job is to sit in the living room of the family and say, “Come to my school, I’ll take care of your son.” When he’s not there, that presents a bit of a problem. This is one of the most asinine rules that must be changed immediately.
Next week I will continue with thoughts on the world of recruiting today, and where recruiting will go if it is not taken care of soon.