Hotdog & Friends

Fig Jam

It will never happen because it makes way to much sense, but the NCAA could make all college sports fans lives a lot easier by restricting recruiting to those athletes who have established that they are qualified to enter a D1 school.  Seriously, how hard would it be to limit recruiting to athletes who are actually going to be able to play?  I know that different schools have different academic requirements, etc., but you could establish some baseline criteria surrounding GPA and test scores (actually achieved, not hypothetically possible) before  a kid can send in a signed Letter of Intent.  Conceivably, if that were the actual rule, the only thing a kid would have to do once he had signed his LOI, would be to actually graduate. 

I understand that sometimes kids get test scores at the last minute and get into a school, but it seems like more often than not, schools are losing 3-6 incoming freshmen every season to academic issues.   Changing the rule would do a few things.  First, it might actually motivate a kid to be a better student in high school at an earlier stage than ‘the last possible second.’  If you are on Florida or USC or Ohio State’s radar as a sophomore/junior but you have crappy grades and your preliminary test scores are terrible, you run the risk of those higher profile schools losing interest and pursuing blue chip talent that is less of an academic liability.  Don’t want to waste time and recruiting dollars on a kid who may not be eligible to even sign a LOI as a senior.

(more…)