2013 College Football Coaching Carousel thread...

What would that do except make everybody's life more miserable for another month? The kids already know who the coaches are when they sign in February.

 

If anything, they should move signing day UP to something like August 1. The elite guys are committing during their junior years or during the spring and summer afterward nowadays, so it would help everyone to get it over with before the season starts.

They could still have a late signing period for guys who are under-the-radar and/or undecided heading into their senior years.

 

Here we go ...

https://twitter.com/BFeldmanCBS/status/408813171013476352

 

Jesus Christ.

 

The coaches don't want an early signing period because they want to see them play their senior years. Probably one of the bigger reasons you see teams have two byes during a season - so the coaches can go out and recruit/evaluate. Still think the schedule is screwy. Coaches get dumped/switch jobs in December/other coaches get hired by the NFL in January causing more chaos and then as soon as signing day happens in February - after college staffs have had one last chance to push kids to sign with them, signing day is on Feb. 1. Followed by many assistants leaving the programs where they just landed several recruits. It's the classic situation of being hired by a guy who his headed out the door, or even worse accepting a job with a company in a department where the supervisors weren't involved with your application process.

 

Hans,

That was my suggestion. The thing I hear/read most often when a coach takes a new job (like Sarkisian) is rather than finishing his current season with his team, he leaves immediately in order to get a head start on recruiting. Well, if you adjusted the calendar, a coach could finish his current season and then make the move and still have two months to recruit.

I have a general disregard for coaches (or anyone else) bailing in the middle of their contracts, much less the current season. Yet it happens every year and is terribly unfair to the players and the rest of the coaching staff. It seems that pushing the dates back might be the easiest way to avoid that.

 

Yeah Dan, I'm not a big fan of moving up the signing period, either. If someone wants to make a verbal commitment early, fine. Let him make it in grade school for all I care.

But too much can happen on either side over the course of a year. I recall one player in a town I worked in a few years back was a hot recruit, then tore up his knee prior to his senior season. So things can and do change on the player's end. Same for the schools. Maybe someone commits because of coach Smith, who then either gets fired, resigns or whatever before the kid ever gets to campus. So don't make it binding. I'd just as soon wait until sometime in the spring to have signing day.

 

You want really screwy - college baseball recruiting. You sign a batch of players. Some of them tear it up their senior years and get drafted and sign, you have college juniors who get drafted but maybe they sign, maybe they don't, and you have a couple of months to fill out the rest of your team. Granted, the scholarship situations are different but...

 

Football's the only sport where there isn't an early signing period, isn't there?

 

I don't think soccer has one. Here's the list of NCAA signing periods:

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/nli/nli

 

Was he ever the coach at Lehigh? I think I remember that name from when I covered JMU's title run in 2004. They played at Lehigh that year in the playoffs. In related news, Bethlehem, Pa., didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it would. Ended up having a pretty good time.

 

Yep. Same guy. Also coached at Elon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Lembo