The Penn State outrage ...

After reading the grand jury report enumerating and describing the sordid details of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged sexual assault of young boys, it's difficult to believe that anyone with knowledge of Sandusky's not-so-secret behavior -- much less than people with near-ultimate authority, such as now-former head coach Joe Paterno and Penn State President Graham Spanier -- would allow any possibility of it continuing. But that's what appears to have happened.

Several points come to mind:

• This did not involve only a single incident, or even a couple of incidents. It was many incidents, involving many boys, over many years -- more than a decade. For Joe "I wish I had done more" Paterno and other coaches and administrators at Penn State to cover up this long history of criminal behavior is incomprehensible -- and scary for the rest of us who realize what control and power these coaches and administrators have over college students, even if those students are much less vulnerable than the boys who were molested and assaulted.
• Clearly, coaches' and adminstrators' loyalty to Penn State football and Joe Paterno took precedence over protecting young, defenseless, vulnerable boys from a predator. In short, this was loyalty run amok. And there's a lesson in that for all of us, who sometimes believe in people and institutions without question ... voluntarily waiving our ability to clearly judge what is right and what is wrong. 
• In the end, the cover-up conducted by Paterno and other coaches and administrators caused precisely what they wanted to prevent -- damage to the good name and reputation of Penn State University and its football program. As the author of a book on college football recruiting, I've been asked how this might affect the football program's recruiting efforts (an issue which pales beside others, such as the effect on the children who were so violently abused by Sandusky). In response, I can say that if I was the parent of a football player being recruited by Penn State, I would go out of my way to prevent my son from joining that team until every one of Paterno's assistant coaches, and probably many of the football programs administrative staff, left the program. I would not want my son put into the hands of anyone whose loyalty to Paterno and Penn State football was so extreme that they could not or would not, over more than a decade, prevent one of their own from inflicting such serious harm on defenseless and vulnerable young people.

Football recruiting letters ... what they mean and don't mean

Receiving a letter from a nationally ranked college football program -- or almost any college football program, for that matter -- is good news that's tremendously exciting to players and their families. But those players and families should also understand what those recruiting letters are -- and what they are not.

Recruiting materials from college programs are usually form letters expressing the college's interest in the high school player. Questionnaires are usually included too. High school football athletes who hope to play football in college should always complete and return those questionnaires to ensure that college football coaches have as much information -- especially vitally important contact information -- as possible. Without that, college coaches won't have a needed starting point for taking a further look at a player and evaluate him.

If a player gets letters from a college, that's certainly a sure sign that he's of some interest, probably because he is performing well as a high school player, or has the size, weight, strength or speed to get that attention. But at least hundreds, and probably thousands, of other high school football players are also receiving those letters from that same college.

By itself, getting a form letter means simply that a player is on a college football program's mailing list. It doesn't mean that the player is being recruited, but only that the college probably wants to evaluate him to determine if he should be recruited to meet that team's needs. Hopefully, a college's interest in a player increases as he performs well throughout the season, and communications will become more personal, through telephone calls and electronic messages.

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The $2,000 stipend for scholarship athletes ...

Now the NCAA will allow college football conferences to allow – if they want – their schools to give athletes on full scholarships an additional stipend of up to $2,000 per year. The need for this additional money is understandable. After all, despite its value to players, even a full-ride scholarship doesn’t provide money for gas … for an occasional pizza … for a movie.  And even if scholarship athletes could get legitimate jobs, the time demands of their commitment to the team don’t come close to allowing that. There are practices, meetings, workouts … even the so-called “voluntary” workouts during the summer … that effectively turn many college athletes, and especially those at Division I schools, into de facto full-time employees of the institution, even if that makes these student-athletes’ educations a secondary consideration (an issue for another day here). So based on the need to help these full-ride scholarship players cope with legitimate, additional financial needs, NCAA president Mark Emmert makes a good case, as noted in a great question-and-answer exchange in the Houston Chronicle. But part of what he says – that this will not widen the gap between the football programs with great resources and the football programs with not-so-great resources – is a bit of a stretch. Although we’re all familiar with media reports of how much revenue football programs bring in,  that's the exception rather than the rule. The fact is that most don’t make money. In fact, between 2004 and 2010, only 7 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) made money, according to an NCAA report.  UPDATE: As of December 15, the rule was suspended, pending a meeting of the NCAA board of Governors in mid-January,2012.

Player "fit" varies among colleges ...

Probably most high school football players who hope to play in college begin looking at specific schools -- Texas, Ohio State, USC, Alabama, for example. But they would be wise to focus instead on their own skills, speed, height, and weight, and then figure out which schools are most likely to need what they bring to the table, based on how well their own characteristics match the needs of different schools. Sometimes entire conferences are geared toward a certain type of player, as noted in Kevin Lyttle's insightful article in the Austin American-Statesman. Although teams in the Big 12 and the SEC are among the best in the nation this year, making those conferences also the best, the style of play in each of those conferences tends to be vastly different -- ensuring that teams in each conference look for similarly different types of players. Potential recruits should take note.

NCAA updates football graduation rates ...

Annually updated graduation rates for college football players were released a few days ago by the NCAA, and the range among Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) programs is, well, extensive. Officially called the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR, the NCAA's measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Just for grins, I've taken a look at the latest GSRs for the schools in the latest BCS standings. Interesting stuff. Draw your own conclusions:

1.  LSU – 77 percent

2.  Alabama -- 69
3.  Oklahoma State -- 65
4.  Boise State-- 74
5.  Clemson -- 62
6.  Stanford -- 87
7.  Oregon -- 63
8.  Kansas State -- 62
9.  Oklahoma -- 48
10. Arkansas -- 56
11. Michigan State --62
12. Virginia Tech -- 79
13. South Carolina -- 39
14. Nebraska -- 67
15. Wisconsin -- 66
16. Texas A&M -- 59
17. Houston -- 57
18. Michigan -- 71
19. Penn State -- 87
20. Texas Tech -- 68
21. Arizona State -- 64
22. Georgia -- 65
23. Auburn -- 63
24. Texas -- 57
25. West Virginia -- 75

Coach turnover rate surprisingly high ...

At top-level (Division I) college football programs, chances are only about 50-50 that a player's head coach as a freshman will be his head coach when he is a senior. So it's a good idea for high school football recruits to base their commitment decisions on more than how they like those coaches personally. Recruits should also consider whether the college itself is a good fit for them academically, socially, and geographically.

Looking at the numbers, head coach turnover averaged nearly 19 percent annually over the past three years (2009-2011) at Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) programs, according to NCAA statistics. And head coach turnover averaged more than 13 percent annually over the last three years at Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) programs. No data is available for lower-division programs.

So taken together, this data indicates that there were head coaching changes at nearly one-half of NCAA Division I football programs over the most recent three-year period (2009-2011). And that doesn't take into account other coaching changes among offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, and other assistant coaches. Many of them leave and join college football coaching staffs every year, even if the head coach remains the same at a given program.

Assistant coaches are often the primary points of contact for college players, so a player's college football experience can be greatly affected when those assistants leave and new ones arrive -- another great reason for taking into account other factors, such as academics, social issues, and location -- when recruits try to determine where to play college football.

Coaching changes often begin in late November and December, soon after the end of a football season in which a college team might fail to meet the expectations of fans, alumni, and other supporters.

Texas regulates two-a-day football practices ...

In a big step toward improving player safety, Texas is outlawing two-a-day sessions during the first four days of late-summer high school football practices, limiting two-a-days to every other day, and requiring at least a two-hour break between two-a-days on days when they are allowed. This is a big, welcome step for football-crazy Texas, where late-summer temperatures frequently exceed triple digits. Wonder if this move will influence other states to take similar action if they haven't already done so. Didier Morais writes a good summary piece in the Houston Chronicle and Rick Cantu offers some excellent commentary in the Austin American-Statesman.