UPDATE: This article has been updated with corrections provided by Susan Peal, NCAA Director of Governance, NLI. The full transcript of her comments can be viewed here. We highly recommend reading them, as they aptly describe the multilayered governance of NCAA recruiting.
Go figure: Two of the power brokers of college football — Ohio State’s Urban Meyer and Alabama’s Nick Saban — are against the NCAA Football Oversight Committee recommendations to add an early signing period or two. They fear the probability of losing late signees who change their mind about going to their original favorite.
The council is now asking the Collegiate Commissioners Association, the association which governs National Letters of Intent to, as the NCAA’s Susan Peal put it, “look at an early signing period now that they have put forward recruiting rules that would shift the recruiting calendar.”
The first signing period would start on the last Wednesday in June and the second would happen in December coinciding with the time junior college players can sign their letters of intent.
Recruits currently cannot sign until National Signing Day, which is the first Wednesday of February. Any commitment a recruit makes before that is considered non-binding. The recruits remain open game until their signature is on the line.
That means coaches like Meyer and Saban have until the last minute to coax a five-star talent to change his mind and play for their programs.
Meyer uses the excuse that 17-year-olds change their mind all of the time, so why put the clamps on them?
“I hear the reasoning is because there’s so many de-commitments,” Meyer said in a press conference. “What the hell does that mean? So because 18-year-olds – excuse me, 17-year-olds – are de-committing, let’s give them a legal document so they can’t de-commit? That’s not very smart. Young people have a right to choose where they want to go to school. Period. Let them de-commit a hundred times. That’s why they’re called 17-year-olds.”
What Meyer does not mention is that signing a letter of intent allows the recruit to put all the sales pitches behind him and concentrate only on his studies and training with his high school football coach, coaching staff, and teammates. Instead of continuing to get a barrage of phone calls and text messages from college coaches – which should happen – they can move on to focusing on personal growth in the classroom and football field.
If an early signing period was already in place, Ohio State would not have landed former Maryland commits quarterback Dwayne Haskins and linebacker Keandre Jones, who changed their mind in January and opted to sign with the Buckeyes before signing last February.
Saban reasoned that early signing periods would adversely affect finding diamonds in the rough late in the recruiting process because scholarship allotments will be filled.
My question: Doesn’t that fall on the coaches, and their evaluation of high school prospects? Shouldn’t revenue-rich Alabama have every means available to find these diamonds in the rough by June and December of their last year in high school? And let’s face it, Alabama’s primary objective is to stockpile its roster with five-star prospects rather than diamonds in the rough.
“We would probably make some academic, character and maybe evaluation mistakes, because you aren’t even seeing a guy play during his senior season,” Saban said. “The other thing from a high school coaches’ standpoint, I mean what is really the guy’s motivation to play, and really work hard to get better to play for his team in his senior year.”
With this reasoning, does that mean high school basketball prospects who sign during the fall period skate through their senior seasons? Hardly. Many, if not all, compete just as diligently while trying to improve on their individual skills through a team infrastructure. Saban should be shrewder than that to ask what a player’s motivation is if that player already signed.
Saban can’t sign all the players he wants because of scholarship-limit requirements, so that’s another flaw in the diamond-in-the-rough excuse.
It does not matter if five signing periods exist – or none at all – no program can land all the recruits they come across. Many players fall through the cracks and prosper with lower-level programs or as walk-ons. They will get their opportunity.
Programs a tier below the Power 5, and even those lower-rung Power 5 programs, will welcome two early signing periods because that gives them a better chance to secure the talent bigger programs may have snubbed or misevaluated. Coaches like Saban and Meyer should find it more difficult to backtrack and raid talent after they finally decide to turn the light on and recruit these kids.
Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, the anti-Saban, is in favor of the early signing periods, calling the current February setup “antiquated.” Harbaugh knows that a program like Michigan sells itself and that he annually will land a vast majority of recruits he and his coaches want in the first place. Signing a de-committed player from another program should not make or break a traditional power like Michigan.
“I feel like, if somebody wants to sign an agreement, they should be able to sign before the first Wednesday of February,” Harbaugh said. “I feel like we haven’t changed in so long. It’s been the same antiquated system for 30-40 years and, obviously, as people make their decisions earlier, they should have the ability to sign that agreement.”
Now it’s up to the CCA to determine if the hierarchy like Saban and Meyer will get their way and only a February signing period will continue to exist, or if the majority of college football will climb a step up the ladder toward those power brokers in the game.
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