College Football Recruiting: Here’s how the process should be changed
College football recruiting has become a big business, and as much as anything else, that’s just bad for the sport.
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We’re less than a week away from National Signing Day, and already my guts are starting to churn and my colon is beginning to tighten. The entire overblown recruiting process culminates with this dog and pony show, and it’s all become too Vegas-esque.
How did it come to this? How did we go from kids visiting schools, weighing their options and choosing a college, to narcissistic teens and overbearing parents trying to outdo each other on YouTube and Twitter.
Instead of the process being a measure of which school is going to be the best fit for a player both educationally and athletically, it’s now Vaudeville, with every one of us buying tickets, throwing our feet on the stage and waiting to shoot our guns in the air.
And we’re all to blame — both those who gleefully or begrudgingly participate in this entire farce — we feed the beast with every tweet, every article, every news break.
Something has to change, and change soon. If we want to stop seeing student-athletes throw away their gifts and spend more time in police lineups than football lineups, we have to figure out how to reverse what seems to be irreversible.
Recruiting needs to return to it’s roots. Back to players looking outward to the schools which appeal to them, and reaching out to make contact.
“Hi coach, this is Joe Quarterback from Suburban High. I really like what I see in your program and I’d like to schedule a day to come visit with you and to talk about my future”
Simple as that. No texts or phone calls from coaches or “recruiting specialists”. Just a student interested in a school, and letting them know.
Rather than limit the number of times a coach can contact or when they can contact or why they can contact, let’s just say…no contact. Unless a student has come to them and expressed an interest, you can’t make personal contact.
Schools should mail whatever propaganda they like, and coaches should have generic videos prepared online for enticing players to schedule visits, but this shouldn’t be about what’s best for each program or each coach’s career. It needs to be about the student and what’s best for them, and most importantly, without disturbing their family or community in the process.
All of that is just the foundation for stopping what has become the most disturbing part of the college football recruiting process.
Commit.
Defined by Merriam-Webster as “pledge or bind (a person or an organization) to a certain course or policy.”
We are basically opening up this process with teaching these kids to go back on their pledges and to completely ignore the meaning of the word they are so loosely throwing out there.
“I’ve committed to school X” “No, wait…I’ve de-committed from school X” And my favorite of all “He’s flipped his commitment”
First of all, what the hell is de-committed? There’s no such word except in college football during recruiting. When you commit, you are all in. And flipping your commitment? Almost sounds like polygamy with helmets and shoulder pads.
If a student is still sifting through schools and visiting with coaches, how can he be committed? That’s like getting engaged but telling your girlfriend you’re still going to date around, and you may take back that ring and give it to someone else.
We need to do away with this word as part of the vernacular in the recruiting process, and do away with it now. There needs to be different terms applied, and when the word “commit” is finally used, that’s it. Done. Hands off, he’s picked his school.
Once a player utters that word, the Letter of Intent should be signed on the spot. Make them hold to their commitments and understand the gravity of what they are doing.
Up until then, it should be discussed in terms of what school is a “favorite” to land a recruit, or if a player really feels strongly about a school, he should say that school is simply at the top of his list right now.
And that above-mentioned Letter of Intent should be binding. It’s a promise, and it forces coaches to move one scholarship out of the available column. To flip and flop and muddle the whole process is unfair to both the school and other players who may have benefited from that scholarship and chose elsewhere because it wasn’t available.
If we streamline this process and make that commitment exactly what it is, then you’ll see less of players trying to “get out” of their letter of intent.
And finally we come to the mothership of bad ideas in recruiting – National Signing Day.
So, let’s take 17-18 year-olds and make them feel like rock stars and give them all the attention of championship-winning professional athletes before they’ve even had a chance to get pennied into their dorm room for the first time. (Those of you over 35 will totally understand that reference).
When did anyone actually think this would be a good idea?
By allowing these kids to become celebrities before they’ve even set foot on the field in college contributes to their feeling of being indestructible as much as anything else. They feel they’re not expendable and that the school and coaches will be their veil of protection because they’re just so important to the program.
Unfortunately, that happens far too often, and we fortify this feeling with the spectacle of National Signing Day.
We could still have the news and excitement of players signing with a particular school without the television, without the endless media hype, and without players trying to figure out how to one-up the last guy in how he revealed his commitment.
It’s got to change. All of it. For the betterment of the students. They need to have their feet on solid foundation when they begin college, and shouldn’t feel like they are already cock-of-the-walk before they’ve even learned to walk.
Will it change? Probably not. And that’s unfortunate. We love our entertainment far too much, and using these kids and their decision on a college as entertainment is as wrong as can be imagined.