Steve, I couldn't disagree more.....giving a scholarship to a walk-on who has busted his hump likely for several years under incredible odds and persevered is a great and wonderful thing for those kids and the life lessons it provides to the rest of the young men on the team and perhaps because of their athletic gifts have not had to work for anything. As for Tressel, it's not something he's forced to do, it's something he plans for and has become an annual event to reward those that have earned it through their hard work and perserverance..... The mistake is putting your program in a position of having to tell two kids that their dreams have just been dashed, they are now unworthy, after having courted them for months and perhaps denied them an opportunity to go elsewhere......
The high school coaches weren't too happy with Spurrier since they didn't know about it till the last day when it was too late to do anything.
At the end of the day, it's just a festering open wound for college football and the game will be better served once the NCAA puts forth an effective solution....but until then, it's a trainwreck.
Spurrier talks about walk ons like they have the plague. ND's kicker is as good as any scholarship kicker in the game and he was a walk-on.
While I agree with some of your comments, some of you don't understand Spurrier very well. He has always had walk ons, Chris Doering was a walk on and more than one of his field goal kickers at Florida were walk ons. He didn't knock giving scholarships to walkons but did defend something that would limit them by over signing. His point was that in the area he recruits a lot of players don't qualify. You can disagree with that if you want but he was not knocking walk ons.
:roll: If they don't qualify, then they shouldn't be offered. There's no excuse for not running all recruits through the admissions office before they're offered. Spurrier's statement is disingenuous crap. The kids who were turned away were denied because he found better players. He didn't just discover that they weren't real college students on signing day. He knew it all along...
The problem is because some schools don't bother to determine if a recruit will qualify they make a guess. Not wanting to be on the short side, they take a number that insures that they fill every spot. If there are too many, too bad for some kids. Why parents and coaches let kids chase a possible scholarship puzzles me. Why they don't "steer" kids to schools that mean a commitment when they make one makes little sense. Is a possibility of playing for a major school more important than a full ride for a college education? It seems to me that priorities are totally out of whack.
Sorry guys but many players are on the bubble as far as qualifying and if it's questionable then they will get offers. When Spurrier was at Florida very few of his players did not qualify and Florida does run them through admissions and our admission standards are higher than NCAA minimum requirements. But it's not illegal to offer a player hoping he will qualify or that once he goes to a Junior College he will sign with your school. I understand why you feel like you do but it's simple to say not to offer a borderline player but there would be a ton of players not getting offers if it was done that way.
I have no problem with offering a kid thinking he might qualify academically and then it doesn't happen. I have problems with dropping a kid because you signed too many and others were better. Which is it?...I don't know.
Only problem Stu is that if you have a number of people who may not qualify that's were some of the over signing comes in, then if several of them qualify you are over. I think that the coaches should be up front with a player that you may not be able to get the scholarship if certain people qualify. These things usually work out but sometimes they don't. Spurrier does not have a track record of over signing. I do have a problem with dropping existing players because you now think you have found a better one.
Maybe Notre Dame needs to start oversigning players from Spurrier's recruiting area.......players like Tony Rice from S.C. who led ND to it's last national title: From this article: http://www.isteve.com/Hornung.htm "Having been born and raised in South Bend has allowed me the chance to accumulate a few sources inside Notre Dame’s football program over the years; one was unavailable for this column, another told me that the things people should know are generally those they aren’t supposed to know at all. For example, that academic exceptions have been made when it mattered most, especially under Lou Holtz between 1986 and 1990. Todd Lyght (cornerback), Tony Rice (quarterback), Raghib Ismail (wide receiver), Bryant Young (defensive lineman) and Jerome Bettis (running back) are just five examples of very good players admitted with less than stellar academic backgrounds. All but Rice played in the NFL, they all managed to graduate. The point is that if the University truly had standards set in stone – as it suggested in a press release Wednesday – none of those players, and in that I mean none of them, would have ever been admitted. Said my source, “If Tony Rice’s transcript and SAT scores were brought into the admissions office today, they would be set on fire.” Quarterback Rice is said to have been one of only two "Proposition 48" athletes ever admitted to Notre Dame (i.e., he had to sit out the 1986 season because he couldn't meet the Prop. 48 standards). Under Proposition 48, student athletes were required to have a minimum SAT score of 700, or an ACT score of 17, and a minimum GPA of 2.0 in at least 11 courses in core classes, according to the NCAA Web site. Rice scored a scintillating 690. According to the anti-SAT Fairtest organization:
I'm not sure what your point is Dave? Tony would not get into ND now or actually he would not have gotten into ND other than the narrow window when we took a couple of Prop 48 athletes. Of course both the Prop 48 athletes were screened and it was determined that they had the character to come and work hard in the classroom and maybe make it. They couldn't play football (or even practice with the team) during their freshman year and had to meet certain academic standards during their freshman year before they could join the team as sophmores. So in that sense Prop 48 wasn't a bad deal, gave kids a shot ...come and show us you are serious. Tony did, he was and he graduated. But what we are talking about here is over signing.
Bill, I understand your fondness for Spurrier, but to be objective for a moment, do you really think that the kids that were dropped were dropped to add room for inferior players? All programs have to address the uncertainty of the qualifying process....to put in place a mechanism that would force programs to do more homework upfront and put the burden on the coaches rather than put the entirety of the risk and the burden on the kids would seem to be a good thing imo....
It turned out well for ND and for the players.....a win-win. Rice is a typical academic borderline case from Spurrier's recruiting area...the fertile but academically challenged grounds of South Carolina. SC isn't the national draw that ND is by any means so how successful would Spurrier be if didn't take a chance on a couple of kids or three? But by doing so he has to expect a greater turnover than does the coach at ND so maybe slightly oversigning is a gamble Spurrier has to make.
I'm not against SOS gambling, just not with the kids money...how about he gamble with his own money. Do his research, and if a chance is to be taken how about Spurrier take the chance on the kid qualifying and not have another kid on the hook just in case. That way if he wins he gets the kid he wanted, if he loses he comes up 1 player short in the class. The kid who he had on the hook ends up someplace else with a scholarship, instead of wondering what the heck he's going to do at the last minute.
BT and Terry, first yes I am fond of Spurrier, however that also means I am familiar with the way he operates. This is the first time I have ever known of him taking an action like this. To me his track record means a lot more than one incident where people want to use it in favor of their cause. Also what I do not think we know is whether or not the player involved knew in advance he might not get the scholarship. We know his coach said it was a surprise but maybe or maybe not. I choose to judge Spurrier or any coach in the big picture not one incident. Also the article said that the players involved may yet get into S. Carolina. Also I don't have a problem if a kid is allowed to commit if he knows up front it is contingent on another player. MCG also makes a good point about S. Carolina not being a national draw and they have to take some chances.
I agree that one incident does not overshadow a complete body of work....I do also agree with TOK's point, that it is not a risk to the coach or the program, it is only a risk to the kid. TOK's point is a good one, to be a risk, the coach needs to have some skin in the game as well and there should be some downside if one takes too many, excessive "risks". As it stands now, it doesn't appear that there is any.....
Not only only SouCar but pretty much all SE area schools who recruit poor kids from rural areas in Ga., Fl, S.C. and Alabama as well as inner city kids from places like Birmingham, Atlanta and Miami. The academics in some of these places I am sure leaves a lot to be desired but at least if they get a coach like Spurrier or Saban to take a flyer on them they just might wind up as successful as Tony Rice did years ago for Notre Dame and get a degree.