Ineligible Recruits are pissing me off
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.
I know I know…. NOBODY really cares about academics anymore, but it would be neat to see the NCAA at least pretend and emphasize the value of a legitimate high school education as opposed to emphasizing the importance of achieving the bare minimum in order to begin generating the millions of dollars the NCAA generates every season.
The second benefit of this new rule would be to allow teams to fill out their roster and not lose recruits who are counted on to fill voids or provide depth. Coaches could sign 20-25 athletes that, so long as they graduate, will be assured of being eligible for their freshman seasons. Either your in, or your out. When you are in, you can sign your LOI and show up. It’s dumb to allow players to sign LOI’s before they have met the minimum requirements necessary to attend the school. It allocates a scholarship to a player that may never use it, and disallows the school from pursuing other players who may be eligible and able to contribute to the program.
The fans would also benefit. To some degree, I feel betrayed by my school when I learn that a recruit is not eligible and feel like the coaching staff/athletic department was not forthcoming with me about the fact that the kid they signed was a total liability. I have to assume that the coaches that recruited the kids and the athletic department officials who handled his paperwork knew that his arrival on campus was really speculative…. but they never say anything until waaaay later. As a fan and a donor, I think I deserve a little better than to learn that a talented and prized recruit never actually had what it took to enroll in the school, and that in no small part his signing was largely symbollic in order to help with recruiting rankings, etc.
Like I said at the beginning, I know this will never happen. It would make the recruiting process more efficient, save schools time and money, emphasize education at an earlier stage, and provide for a greater degree of openess with the fanbase. In other words, it is a total pipedream. It would just be nice is all.
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Just finished a book called Game On about the disaster that is youth sports: parents paying tens of thousands of $$ per year for kids to have private coaches, make select teams, etc, with the hope of getting a scholarship.
The author’s suggestion is that preferential admission for athletes be completely eliminated. Not scholarships, mind you. As he (rightly) points out, this wouldn’t eliminate opportunities for pro prospect athletes, they could still get scholarships to schools with less rigorous academic standards–prep schools, community colleges, (cheap shot alert…) Wazzu–but the focus for parents and athletes would then not be on qualifying for schools, but on being good enough to get into the school on one’s own merit.
Can you imagine the devastating financial impact that would have on the PAC 10 sports scene? How many players on today’s rosters would get in to: Stanford, USC, CAL, UCLA, or UW? Answer: almost none. You may get a few players getting into UO, OSU, WSU, UA, and ASU, but even those schools would not be competitive. End result would be that the PAC 10 would never again compete on the national level, in any major revenue generating sport. Probably cost the schools 100′s of millions of dollars. (same thing goes for the ACC, except for Florida State).
I mean sure the institutions may improve from an educational standpoint and allow the next generation of students to focus on preserving the Country’s fading status as a world leader (I don’t hear much about college sports in Japan or India), but I think if given the choice between being internationally relevant and having a national title, 8 of 10 of today’s college students would take the title (in the south that number increases to 11 out of 10).
Count me in for a national title vote.
That 11th kid in the south would have voted, but he was too busy writing a paper for the 3rd string running back. You know, just in case.
The thing is, “student-athletes” comprise such a small portion of the overall student population. There are 101-105 kids on the UW football roster. How many total students attend the UW? 30,000 undergraduate; 40,000 total? That’s about one quarter of a percent. I focus on football because it has the largest roster and generates the most money. This money, presumably, is recycled back into the university: expanding the library, buidling classrooms and research facilities, providing financial assistance to graduate students doing the Ph.D. research in electro-magnetic physics that will someday result in man’s ability harvest the gravitational affects of the moon’s orbit for our own energy uses. That, of course, is complete bull shit, but you get my point. Athletic programs generate a crap-load of money for the university and the NCAA. Money they can always justify as providing legitimate educational needs.
How much of that money generated by sports actually goes back to the school? I don’t think much of it. Over 2/3rds of all athletic departments are in the red too. Just sayin…
I doubt the people who made the UW budgets this year factored in any potential Rose Bowl winning income to decide whether or not to expand the library or add research facilities.
Thats not to say that none of it goes to scholarships or where ever, I just mean its probably done in the same way lotter money goes toward education (ie without meaningful effect).
On a side note, Im not convinced that the NCAA doesnt have a plan to keep Josh in school for the greater part of the 21st century. I havent put the whole puzzle together yet, but ive recently confirmed my hypothesis that it has to do with gravitational affects of the moon.