| 03 October 2009
College football recruiting is crazy. There's rules upon rules about what a coach can do and what he can't. There's specific times when he can contact recruits. Specific amounts of types of communication. There's only so many visits they're allowed to take. There's so many rules I don't know how they can keep it straight. There's even unwritten rules about recruiting in different conferences so other coaches don't go after other coaches' recruits. Now the problem with so many rules comes violations. It seems ordinary now for coaches to have violations in recruiting or other NCAA related rules. Earlier this year we saw Rich Rodriguez be accused of violations when it comes to practice time. We also saw Lane Kiffin involved in multiple recruiting violations for speaking to a player at the wrong time and mentioning him on the radio. The problem is that the coaches have to follow all these rules, but what about the players?Recruiting for players is a whole other story. The top recruits get the pampered life. They have high profile coaches flying in to see them. People are asking for their autograph. Requests for interviews upon interviews to try and uncover any sort of information that they'll divulge. It is almost seems like the recruits can do whatever they want and there isn't any consequences for their actions. Now most of what they do is fine. Let them have some of the limelight; get a little taste of success. My problem with recruits is decommittals. Every year there is an abundance of players who verbal agree to come to a school and then decommit due to they changed their mind or another coach persuaded them to change their mind. This is a tough decision in these players' lives, but they are also young adults who have to take some responsibility for their decisions. There are probably multiple ways that college football can change the recruiting landscape, but one simple way to help improve it would be to have an early signing period. The early signing period would allow recruits to sign before the usual signing day and then they would be contractually obligated to attend the school. The early signing period would not only benefit the school, because they know the recruit is coming, but also the recruit, because other coaches couldn't try to recruit them anymore. This is only one route that recruiting needs to turn to because the state of recruiting in college football is not only hurting programs who thought they had committed players, but the players as a whole as well. A player that takes up a scholarship and then decommits is essentially hurting other players who could've had that scholarship. Recruiting needs to change to help college football as a whole.
