Months before the first snap of his junior season, Chad Voytik already had a football scholarship offer from a Southeastern Conference program. The Cleveland High School quarterback is being heavily recruited by several other SEC teams, and the list of offers is expected to grow once the Blue Raiders’ season kicks off.
But if a recent NCAA proposal is passed, future promising prep athletes will not be able to commit before the summer preceding their senior year. Last month the Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet backed a proposal to ban scholarship offers to recruits before July 1 between their junior and senior years in high school. The proposal also would require college coaches to receive a high school transcript documenting at least five semesters or seven quarters of academic work for a recruit before offering a scholarship.
“I feel very fortunate that somebody already feels confident enough in me to offer,” said Voytik, who got an offer from Mississippi State last month. “But I can see why they want to give kids the chance to get more information and enjoy your high school career a little more before having to make such a big decision.
“There’s pressure to perform and get an offer, so I felt a lot of relief when I knew that, no matter what, I already have one big-time offer. But really, if a school likes you when you’re a sophomore, they’re still going to offer you as a senior.”
With nearly two months remaining before the start of the high school football season, the University of Texas already has 22 commitments for the 2011 signing period. Ohio State has 17 and Georgia has 15, including two from the Chattanooga area.
That continuing push to fill a signing class is the central reason for the proposal and already led the NCAA to approve legislation prohibiting schools from sending out written scholarship offers before Aug. 1 of a recruit’s senior year.
Those in favor of the proposal believe eliminating verbal offers would give coaches more time to evaluate players athletically and academically while also giving students and their families more time to explore all their college options. Early commitments are nonbinding and the player has the option of changing his or her mind before signing the letter of intent.
Nothing will be set in stone until the cabinet meets again in September, and any proposal wouldn’t be voted on until January. In the meantime, cabinet members will meet with coaches associations and compile a how-to guide before the proposal becomes an NCAA rule. If passed, the rule would apply to all sports.
“I think the NCAA is probably right: It’s gotten out of control with all the early offers,” said Middle Tennessee State University football assistant David Bibee, who recruits the Chattanooga area. “Our sport has created our own monster by offering so many kids early. But really, what are those early offers really worth?
“All us coaches think we have to do it simply because if another school is offering a kid with talent when he’s a sophomore, you worry about losing out if you don’t do the same thing. Kids and the parents are different now, and they freak out if they’re not getting offers by their junior year. They’ll take the first solid offer they get instead of really looking at everything. Maybe this rule would slow things down a bit.”
Similar to Voytik, McCallie’s Jordan Price and Ringgold’s Matthew Crownover are rising juniors who have either already committed or will have their choice of Division I scholarship offers. The 6-foot-4 Price was named Tennessee’s Division II Mr. Basketball last year and is being heavily recruited by the University of Tennessee, among others. Last November, before he had even played his sophomore season, Crownover committed to sign a baseball scholarship with Clemson University, over offers from LSU and North Carolina. He said he committed early because of the building pressure from other programs.
“As a parent, we saw how the decision weighed on Matthew,” said Crownover’s father David, an assistant coach at Ringgold. “He didn’t sleep well and really just wanted to get the whole process over so he could get back to enjoying his high school career. The recruiting process sounds like a lot of fun, but it can become hectic for kids. I’ve noticed Matthew is a lot more relaxed now that the decision is behind him.”
If the proposal becomes a rule, the NCAA likely would need to change its own definition of a prospect. Currently the NCAA’s recruiting handbook states “a prospective student-athlete is one who has started classes for the ninth grade.”
“When you’re in seventh grade, how can you make a commitment for college?” Petrina Long, the recruiting cabinet’s chairperson, told The Associated Press. “You don’t know what major you’ll want. You don’t know whether physically you’ll be ready. You can’t know.”
As college coaches become more paranoid about having rival schools get the jump on potential star athletes, recruiting continues to become as competitive as the games. In the last year, the father of a seventh-grade quarterback in Delaware said his son had committed to Southern California and Eric Berry’s two younger brothers, who were in eighth grade at the time, committed to then-Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin. When Billy Gillispie was still coaching Kentucky basketball two years ago, he offered an eighth-grader a scholarship.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that recruiting is the second biggest sport going on right now, especially in the South,” said Auburn University football assistant Phillip Lolley. “And young kids love the attention. If you get a kid to commit early, you have to keep in constant contact or else they’ll tell you you’re not showing them as much love as another recruiter.
“If you’re out recruiting seniors during the season and your rival schools are talking to sophomores and juniors, you’re already behind on those kids. At our level, we do it because everybody else is.
“The biggest worry for high school coaches is having grown men telling 15-16-year-old kids that they can get them to the NFL in a few years. Young kids can lose sight of reality real quick. You can recruit the younger kids, but to offer a kid before his senior year, to me is ridiculous.”