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No honor among coaches, prep recruits
Thursday, February 09, 2006
This just in: Some high school recruits lie to college football coaches!
We know this, because Tennessee head coach Phillip Fulmer discovered it to be true in another of his apparent investigations into recruiting problems in college football.
Of course, this time the problem was his recruiting. Fulmer found out that sometimes a high school prospect who has been called and e-mailed and text-messaged and visited in his home and school and generally treated like an heir to the throne during the recruiting process tells a coach he will sign with him, only to later change his mind.
At Tennessee, apparently five top players Fulmer thought he was getting wound up going somewhere else, prompting Fulmer to tell The Associated Press, "There's guys that just lie to you - flat lie to you. That goes back to upbringing."
It's not Fulmer's fault that his recruiting class wasn't as good as normal this year. The blame lies in those parents who don't teach their highly sought-after sons the difference between right and wrong.
Fulmer didn't explain the athletes who beat up other students at parties or in intramural basketball games, or who carry guns or who do any number of other stupid things that we've read about in Knoxville the last few years, but we can assume the fault lies with those players' upbringing as well.
Which begs the question: What kind of kids is Fulmer recruiting?
OK, so that's not really fair. Other schools have players who get in trouble, too. It's the nature of society.
But, what? Is Fulmer is trying to tell us that he's never continued to recruit a prospect after that prospect has committed to another school? His staff has never tried to convince a prospect that perhaps that first commitment was a mistake that could be rectified by coming to Tennessee?
The whole recruiting process is rife with mistrust. Players commit, de-commit, and re-commit all the time. And it's safe to say behind a majority of de-commitments is a rival coach who has made a convincing pitch that has caused a high school senior to waver in his decision.
The fact that coaches don't honor a kid's commitment is the reason they created this one-sided contract called the National Letter of Intent, which binds the prospect to a school.
Prospects don't have to sign a letter of intent. It's not an NCAA rule. All the prospect really wants on signing day are scholarship papers, which is the promise from the school that a scholarship will be there for him when he enrolls.
But coaches don't want athletes to know that, because by not signing a letter of intent, an athlete can change his mind if, say, the coach that recruited him suddenly leaves or is fired, or a school is put on probation, or he sees that promises made to him by the school (such as not promising not to sign any other player at his position) are not kept.
Fulmer also complained that many high-profile prospects seem to enjoy making schools wait for their commitment. He didn't say anything about the low-profile prospects who are kept hanging by those same schools who hold off their offer until the high profile prospect makes up his mind.
So Fulmer feels used and even a bit betrayed. Poor Phil!
My suspicion is that what really bothers Fulmer is that prospects have caught on, and are playing the recruiting game almost as well as coaches like Fulmer.
E-mail: rmelick@bhamnews.com
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This whining by Phil is unbelievable. Why, it is perfectly ok for a kid to be committed to another school for a long time, and then decommit to attend UT. BUT, when the shoe is on the other foot, and a player decommits from UT to attend another school , lo and behold, the recruit must have had a bad upbringing???
Why does this type of whining sound familiar? Seems I previously heard a lot of this coming out of the east.
