Showing posts with label recruiting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recruiting. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Some schools don't like multi-year scholarships ...

There's still not much hard evidence yet about which schools might be offering the new NCAA-approved multi-year scholarships to college football players. But the Austin American-Statesman's Kirk Bohls has a good article today about the entire issue. Bohls notes that some coaches argue that players with multi-year scholarships might become complacent and not work as hard to perform at their best if they know they won't lose those scholarships. With one-year renewable scholarships, they argue, student-athletes have something to work for, and therefore will be more accountable.

Guess that could be an issue for some players, but it's hard for me to believe it would be widespread, certainly not at a level to jeopardize the whole concept. Instead, multi-year scholarships would seem to be one of the few protections players have in world of Division I college football, where coaches have ultimate control over so much of their player's lives, and there is generally little room for players to appeal any coaching decision or behavior. For once, we have an NCAA that is looking out for players' best interest, even if it comes at the expense of the winning-at-any-cost mentality that permeates much of today's big-time college football.

See previous posts in this blog for more background on the multi-year scholarship issue.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Multi-year scholarships ... anyone offering them?

Trying to determine how multi-year athletic scholarships (which can be offered by NCAA Division I colleges and universities now) might change football recruiting, I posed this question to the football recruiting experts at Dave Campell's Texas Football's “Mailbag Madness” column: “Now that Division I multi-year scholarships have withstood a challenge, are any Texas colleges or universities offering them?”

In response, they said they're not aware of any being offered so far, but ... so be sure to take a look at their insightful answer. (At that link, scroll down to the end of the page.)

See my previous post on multi-year scholarships for more background on them. 

Friday, February 3, 2012

Finding the lesser-known recruit ...

When I interviewed college coaches for my book Beyond Friday Nights: College Football Recruiting for Players and Parents, I asked if there any schools to which other coaches pay more attention when it comes to recruiting. In other words, do the coaching staffs at some schools have a reputation, among other college coaches, for finding and developing diamonds in the rough among lesser-known high school football players?

TCU is one of the schools known for that ability, I learned. There's quite a bit of evidence to support that belief, too. TCU football teams have performed at top-tier levels in recent years, but without top-tier recruiting classes, at least as based on such annual rankings by Rivals, Scout, ESPN, and others (if you believe in those things) on every signing day.

After signing day this year, which was only a few days ago, TCU's recruiting class was ranked No. 36 by Rivals and No. 24 by ESPN. So it will be interesting to see perhaps three, four, or five years from now how high TCU will be ranked for performance on the field at the end of the football season.

But what are the implications of all of this if you are a high school football player who hope to play in college? For one thing, it means that if TCU or another school with the same type of reputation for identifying potential among lesser-known high school players becomes interested in you, there's a good chance that other schools will begin looking more closely at you too.

But there's a bit of a downside, too. Too avoid bringing a below-the-radar recruit to the attention of other schools, sometimes a school (not necessarily TCU, I should point out) delays offering a scholarship to that guy. In other words, the school wants to keep its recruits "hidden" for awhile, rather than attracting attention from other schools that might want to recruit a player and convince him to sign elsewhere. That can lead to some anxious weeks or months for the recruit, who wonders why a school showing such strong interest in him won't pull the trigger and offer him a scholarship.

Thoughts and comments welcome below ...