I liked this article quite a bit. It's May.. Spencer is gearing up his writing as usual. Gotta do something in the off-season. http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday...ollege-football-hall-of-fame-is-still-useless
Thanks, Tom. I've been reading the articles for quite some time and never knew what the initials stood for. :roll:
In other news, Nick Saban would probably be in the insurance industry if he wasn't the King of college football. http://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...cruiting-nick-saban-admits-offers-committable
It kind of curious, the answer from Saban is in quotes, the question is implied. Saban never says anything about non-commitable offers. All he is talking about is being able to evaluate players on campus. I wonder what the actual question was? :?:
yeah it's from the Crimson Caravan blog coverage on al.com, I checked the original article and didn't see it there either.
this might be the most appropriate title for an article in a long time. As they say, may the best con win. http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2013/6/3/4392902/hahahahahahaahhahha
Just so we are abundantly clear on this situation... Now that everything has come out of the wash. Mississippi State, which was the school that 100% cooperated with the NCAA was hit with 2 years probation, scholarship loss and the usual public shaming. HOWEVER, if you remember, one of the very public stories to arise from all this was the Cam Newton affair... which no one ever accurately explained or was made to truly defend. The NCAA did all it could to protect a team on the verge of a BCS title appearance and you can't tell me different. So it all wound up being true, except for the Cam Newton thing that no one ever truly followed up on with any real tenacity? (aside from Alabama fans who no one will listen to for obvious conflict of interest reasons). Seriously? This system is beyond broken. http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/2013/ncaa-praises-mississippi-state/
I see that Matthew Thomas offically said he want's to go to USC and sure wishes FSU would release him so he doesn't get penalized a year of eligibility for making a mistake on signing day. I say boo hooo...he changed his mind. He can still go to USC and he can still play for USC he will just lose a year of eligibility if he does, no big deal as I'm sure he thinks he'll be in the league after his 3rd year so he'll leave eligibility on the table. I think the important thing here is that you have several years of recruting for high level prospects like this and you take trips and you talk to your parents and they have to approve your choice on the day you sign your LOI. So if you later change your mind then there should be a penalty, not career ending but unless we want the LOI to be just some conditional piece of paper then you should take it very seriously and realize that you don't get a do over. Just like when you take a final in school, you don't get a do over.
I've changed my position on LOI reversals. After the EV situation and reading Terry's email above, I'm with the "don't release" crowd.
He decided he didn't want to chance the lost year...and I guess he doesn't have a sick grandma. :shock:
I have an issue with all this. The NLI is a shitty agreement and entirely one sided. (the school can leave the kid high and dry fyi). Still, once again ND will wind up bearing the cross for others. What ever happened to that kid at Miami who had his mother steal his NLI/scholarship? Didn't they just send him another one? Funny, people didn't want to talk about 'the responsible parent' in that situation.
I don't follow. A NLI binds the school and player to a one year agreement. If the kid doesn't make a good faith effort to keep up with team conditioning and practices, then the school can decline to renew his scholarship. I believe if that happens the kid can transfer without penalty. The big problem is, when the coaching staff thinks that thier recruit isn't as promised, they can dump him and find someone better. We all know the schools that do that on a regular basis. What pisses me off is that a school that almost always commits to a kid for 4 years has to put off with jerks that want to bail on their LOI. It's kids like that that have schools act as some think that the LOI is a "shitty agreement."
Gip makes good points and I don't have the rock solid solution, although I'd like to throw a few ideas out there. First, I want to clear something up. The NLI binds the player to the school, not the school to the player. This is where the greyshirt issue comes into play. If you ever wondered why in the hell a kid would buy into such a crappy deal as a greyshirt, it's this.. (or worse, the kid could just have the school pull the scholarship) Say a kid, 3 star local boy etc commits to a school. We'll call him Mike. For not so hypothetical purposes, we'll call that school LSU. LSU never backs off recruiting other 'big fish' they were trailing on and wind up having a great year. Some of those 4 and 5 star big fish start warming up to the idea of jambalaya, crawfish and low academic standards. They go neck and neck with all the big boys, and finally LSU wins out on a few that they weren't expecting. Now, here's the problem.. LSU has too many kids promised scholarships. First, what they will do is approach Mike and ask him if he'd be willing to greyshirt and delay enrollment until the Spring. Now, what's Mike to do? He's been anchored to LSU and as a 3 star he faces far less options than the 4 or 5 stars. Mike didn't slack on his workouts. He followed his diet. He made sure all of his grades and test scores were in order. He's already applied, been accepted and chosen his courses. He never wavered on his dream for playing at LSU. It was LSU who wavered on him and is now twisting his arm to delay enrollment. The only thing 'wrong' with Mike is that he's a 3 star and not a 5 star. The school has poor Mike bent right over the barrel. If he refuses the greyshirt, he's not honoring his NLI and the school will grant him the 'favor' of releasing him from his scholarship. Now you may say, 'hey, he can just go somewhere else!' While that is technically true, it's also disingenuous at best. At one time, Mike could have gone to Ole Miss, So Miss, Texas Tech or some other mid-level DI schools.. but now they are all full up.. He now has to search frantically on his own for anyone with a spot open. If he's lucky enough to find an open spot, he has to go through the application and class selection process again, probably on his own dime. Furthermore, the kid who once had several nice backup options is looking at playing at an Arkansas State or other such bottom feeder bandit program. I'd like to say that this is entirely hypothetical, but it's not. LSU has done this more than once. Other schools do this as well, LSU has been the most flagrant. I'd also like to mention that a lot of those greyshirts wind up getting pushed out with the dust come the next spring cleaning. As for Terry's question.. First of all, the deregulation of recruiting was almost the biggest clusterf*ck ever passed by the NCAA. That's just lazy administration. They are too busy counting money to be actively involved in the process anymore. The NCAA seriously needs to clean things out over there. From their investigative divisions, to enforcement, and even outreach programs. That thing needs an overhaul. You can start by NOT using employees of member institutions on any board. There is too great of a conflict of interest. Further, they can easily add simplistic features that are easily enforceable. Even now, coaches can call/text/email/facebook/tweet/whatever kids. Eliminate that. Make sure each prospective student athlete has ONE contact phone number. The NCAA can request that number's records at any time. The NCAA can be pretty tough on 'casual contact' in terms of wording their penalties and restrictions, but they are rather lax about enforcement. Eliminate casual contact. The problem is always in the grey area. Make it a black/white issue. We have college coaches who can't go see their kid's game in HS but we have almost zero enforcement on boosters or even other coaches casually running into an uncle/friend/relative whatever. In all honesty, I wouldn't mind seeing the phone record for each recruit's approved line submitted monthly to the NCAA which brings me to... Investigate transfer/LOI cases such as the Thomas or Vanderdoes case. I have zero proof to back this up, but I also have zero reason to doubt it. If you were to investigate the Vanderdoes family, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that UCLA contacted that kid's family during the 'dead period' in which he was no longer on the table. Punish that. Make it severe even (2 year suspension) or a Major Infraction in terms of the school). Tampering is a growing problem as we're seeing college football is starting to go the way of NCAA basketball. The longer you leave grey area on the table, the more the coaches will exploit it. Which brings me back to.. viewing these schools and coaches as the victims here. While Kelly might well be, and even Fisher (I doubt it), these guys are all operating under the same umbrella. They know full damn well there are some sketchy operators out there, yet they do absolutely nothing about it. Worse, the sketchy guys are not the rogue few. They are the vast majority. There's too much money at stake here. You can simplify the process by making it far more strict. I don't want to hear about cost, the schools showed us that they care nothing of money for that brief month in which we had deregulated recruiting. We'd need very few new rules. Most of the rules are on the books and would simply need to be either enforced, simplified or both. Every time I read these stories, I just shake my head and say 'where the hell is the NCAA? What do these guys do?' Which brings me to, make the NLI a 2 way street and enforce that strictly as well. No more over signing. I don't want to hear about attrition. You have curfews and tutors. If you lose kids due to those things, then do a better job coaching them up as people. We like to think there is this harmonious world of law abiding programs just trying to do their best, when the reality is that it's a confederacy of pirates looking for the next port to raid.
Corey, On your first scenario, I think Gip is correct isn't he? Once the kid faxes in his acceptance, the school is obligated for one year, right? The grayshirt thing occurs before national signing day. On your second point, I agree. I cannot defend the NCAA on anything. I also like your recommendation about the phone and contact. Although it would make it almost impossible for a college coach to visit a high school coach at all. One picture of the college coach passing a potential recruit in the high school hallway or at the local Walmart and wham! major violation. :?:
Well with the grey shirt idea you are really talking about oversigning. I do believe that is a problem and if a school oversigns then IMHO they should be fined or disciplined. In that circumstance in addition to delaying the enrollment which is a legit option, they should be automatically be released from his LOI, school shouldn't be able to hold him to it if they can't enroll him on scholarship. Kids choice take his freedom and move on or accept their offer to delay enrollment. But school should be penalized for oversigning. But that is not the situation with regards to the situations at ND and FSU that got you started on this topic. If I have read your posts correctly then I get the feeling you think both Vanderdoes and Thomas were screwed by the schools and should have been let out of their LOI. Is that right? So my question is if you think the kid should have an out for the LOI, how do schools have any closure to the recruiting process?