Sitting on recruiting news

If you don't steal a kid's shine, you definitely will get that "Big Boy" job over the guy who did.

 

I take it you've never had a coach tell you -- off the record of course, because it's an NCAA violation to talk about this -- that a kid committed when the kid didn't think he had or wouldn't confirm it?

These are 17- and 18-year-olds. I am convinced that often after a hard sell by a school they at least give the coaches some kind of positive response that a recruiting coach can take as a commitment if he wants.

But I know of many, many examples of a parent or a coach saying a kid is going to X school and the kid is not on the same page at all.

In my opinion, if you ever print a "soft commitment" based solely on what a coach tells you, you are acting as a recruiting tool and not a journalist.

But, maybe you'll get clicks or whatever.

 

You don't generate a story off of one offer, but if it's the latest in a string of five or six major program offers and you're in an area without a lot of high major talent, there might be a story there.

Last year, we had a kid commit to a Power 5 school. Looking back through history, the last player from said HS on that P5 team was in like 1990. Another kid from the same HS committed to the same P5 school this year. That's a story angle. The second kid had like 25 P5 offers. That's a story angle.

 

+2

 

What's amazing is how much traffic the whims of a 17-year-old generate and how much thirst there is for news of what some HS lineman who you'd never heard of a week might do.

People are crazy.

 

All verbal commitments are soft. Even the hardest of commitments is non-binding and subject to change until signing day. Also, coaches and schools uses journalists as PR tools all the time, recruiting aside.

 

Yes, but if you write a story because a coach says something newsworthy or a school gives you access because it wants to sell tickets, fine.

But if you print a commitment story from a coach without even talking to the kid, you are just being led around by the nose.

 

Unless it's the number one rated player in the country or at his position , I cannot - for the life of me - understand the obsession with recruiting. It is absolutely mind boggling.

 

Years ago, we had a fullback from a big high school in our area tell our SE he had committed to an SEC school. It smelled fishy. The kid was a good player, but hardly on that level. The SE knew an assistant coach at the SEC school pretty well, so he called him to verify that they were recruiting this kid.
SEC coach had never heard of the player.
The lesson, as always, is try to take commitment news with a grain of salt. Sometimes it's worth a story. Sometimes you work it and the other offers they're getting into a more general feature. Sometimes you write about it in the lead-up to signing day. Until they sign, though, be careful out there.

 

Two questions I would've asked:
1. Are you committing to play football there or just enrolling?

If he says football...
2. Do you mean club football?

 

Yep, got to check those recruiting stories like all the rest. A couple of years back saw a tweet from the juco I covered saying Sandy Slamdunk, one of the school's top players, would be continuing her education at Mid-Major State. Program's first recruit, I thought ... until I called the coach, who told me "HanSen, she's just going there to study. No basketball."

 

Or the "football scholarship" to a Division III school.....

Back on recruiting, we had a national-class recruit set up a ceremony at his home many years ago long, committing to one of the in-state DI schools. Come signing day, and this was long before recruiting websites, he wound up signing with a Big 10 school. Why the deception, we asked. He said he just wanted to get all the people off his back with his earlier "commitment" and never had any intention of going to that school.