News this month that the NCAA plans to consider legislation that would prevent college football programs from making a scholarship offer to a player before the summer between his junior and senior year of high school left many Southeastern Conference coaches thinking the same thing.
Basically, What took you so long?
“I’ve never liked the early recruiting, the early commitment part of it, the way it’s changed here in the last 10 years,” said Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino, set to begin his third season with the Razorbacks. “I’ve liked going through the process, going out on the road, getting into the schools, going in the houses, getting to know the players, getting them on campus, (allowing) them to take all their visits, then, come signing date, making the decision.”
Early recruitment, of course, isn’t brand new. Many players, including incoming University of Florida freshman Trey Burton, have begun settling on schools after just one or two seasons of high school football. Burton made a verbal commitment to Florida prior to his junior year at Venice High School.
But as college coaches in both football and basketball have attempted to stay ahead of the recruiting curve in recent years, they’ve found themselves in an unenviable position: Carry out the tricky (and, according to some, ethically unsound) task of pursuing younger and younger players, or get left behind by programs that do.
Alabama’s Nick Saban said last week, for instance, that 25 of the prep players who competed in a recent Tide camp had already received scholarship offers from other schools despite having just completed their sophomore year of high school, and perhaps the greatest case for early-recruitment regulation came last February, when first-year Southern California coach Lane Kiffin secured a commitment from 13-year-old quarterback David Sills, at the time a seventh-grader at Red Lion Christian Academy in Bear, Del.
While Sills certainly appears destined for success — at 13, he already stands 6-feet tall, and he’s tutored by renowned quarterbacks coach Steve Clarkson, who counts current or recent college standouts Matt Barkley, Jimmy Clausen and Matt Leinart as former pupils — the development was met with equal parts astonishment and outrage by members of the sports world, as critics wondered aloud whether it was time for the NCAA to step in.
It wasn’t the first time that Kiffin rocked the cradle. When he was an assistant at USC, Kiffin admitted he brought head coach Pete Carroll twice to see Barkley, a USC sophomore, play and then offered him—when Barkley was in ninth grade.
“I did,” Kiffin admitted back in January on the day he flew from Knoxville to Los Angeles to take the USC job. “Wait, is that a violation? Is it a violation if you did it, left and then came back? I don’t know. All I know is the kid was really good.”
The argument against early recruiting, meanwhile, seems to be two-fold: On one hand, it can pressure a player into making an uninformed choice before he’s ready. On the other, it forces coaches, in an effort to keep up with opposing schools, to offer scholarships before they can spend sufficient time evaluating a particular player’s abilities and character.
As Saban put it, “These guys haven’t even taken an ACT test yet. How can you evaluate (whether they are) even going to qualify?”
Some programs have attempted to self-regulate.
Saban, for one, said he has attempted to curb the recent trend by speaking with prospects’ high school coaches and guidance counselors before making a formal offer, and former USC coach Pete Carroll reportedly didn’t offer scholarships to high school juniors (or younger) during his early years at the school before later altering his philosophy for fear that the program could lose recruiting ground.
At the same time, even if the proposed legislation is passed – it will likely be voted on between January and April of 2011 — questions remain as to how effective it would actually be.
Petrina Long, chair of the Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet, acknowledged in an interview with the Associated Press last month that the rule would be difficult for schools to monitor, and Florida coach Urban Meyer, while in strong support of the rule changes, implied that without enforced punishment for violators, the new regulations would ultimately prove ineffective.
“You have to enforce them,” said Meyer. “All I’m saying is if that rule is in place, enforce it. If you enforce it, I think it’s a great rule, because you don’t need to do that stuff.”
What’s more, in a recruiting world in which coaches have learned to operate deftly within the gray areas, it’s difficult to predict how such legislation would work. In order to make an impact, coaches say, specifics — What constitutes an offer? Is it limited to written offers? Will verbal offers still be allowed? And how much wiggle room, exactly, will there be? — would most certainly need to be addressed.
Says Petrino, “I’m not sure it does a whole lot if … you (can) call the (high school) coach and say, ‘Tell so-and-so we’re going to offer him.’ Or you call the coach and say, ‘Hey, you know we can’t offer scholarships right now, but if we could…’”
Still, the overwhelming consensus among SEC coaches is that, if done properly, the introduction of such regulations would represent a welcome addition to the college game, allowing coaches to focus on other things and players to experience the full breadth of the recruiting process — all while maintaining a level playing field.
And that, coaches say, is the key.
“As long as it’s the same for everyone, it’s very fair,” Saban said. “I think it would give some of these young people a little more time to evaluate, make some unofficial visits, and evaluate where they might want to go to school.”
— Gator Country reporter Dugan Arnett can be reached at dugan@gatorcountry.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @duganarnett.