“I don’t like it, I can tell you that,” he said. “It’s putting a lot of pressure on high school kids and parents and everyone else. But if you don’t do it, you’ll fall behind. If we didn’t, somebody else will. We’re going to be aggressive with what we do. You can’t sit back or somebody is going to pass you.”
The fear of lagging behind the competition has prompted college coaches to offer scholarships to players far earlier than they would have preferred. About 60 of the nation’s top 100 high school prospects entering their senior years had made verbal commitments by June 1, which is roughly double the number from last year.
Michigan, which has ESPN.com’s No. 2-rated recruiting class for 2013, already has 18 commitments, while Ohio State, ranked fifth, has 16. Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Penn State, Illinois, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue and Iowa also have a dozen or more pledges.
College coaches cite technology as the biggest reason for the change. They once relied on high schools to send film of a prospect by mail, and evaluating a player was a time-consuming process. But now those highlights are only a click away.
And news travels fast when a scholarship is offered. If rival schools don’t quickly follow suit, they lose ground.
“How do you know before a kid even plays his senior year what he’s going to be?” Nebraska coach Bo Pelini said. “There’s going to be a lot more mistakes made. It’s not good. It’s not good for the kids, either. The recruiting starts so early, they can’t even be kids anymore. It’s ridiculous.”
The NCAA tried to slow the recruiting pace two years ago by moving the date written scholarship offers could go out from Sept. 1 of a player’s junior year to Aug. 1 of his senior year, but that did little to address the issue since coaches could still extend verbal offers.
Players also aren’t allowed to make official visits at the college’s expense until Sept. 1 of their senior years, meaning all of those committed prospects had to pay their own way to see multiple schools before making a decision.
“It’s not good for them academically. It’s not good for them financially. You can just count the ways,” Pelini said. “A lot of them don’t have a pot to pee in, and they’re buying unlimited cell-phone plans, and that costs money. It costs money to go on these (college) tours. And it’s getting too many third parties involved.
“I could give you 50 reasons why it’s no good. It’s going more toward basketball, which is a mess.”
Washington caused a stir last week by getting a verbal commitment from quarterback Tate Martell, who will be entering eighth grade this fall. His father said the player was offered a scholarship by the Huskies about a month ago.
Martell, who can’t officially sign until Feb. 2017, has been working with quarterback guru Steve Clarkson. Another Clarkson protégé, David Sills, verbally committed to Southern Cal as an eighth-grader two years ago.
“You can’t change it. It’s the free market,” Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said. “I worry about making a mistake. We’re being forced to offer guys I wouldn’t offer right away — because I’d like to see them in camp.”
All top programs offer summer camps for elite prospects, which are permitted by the NCAA as long as they’re open to the public and players pay an entry fee. The camp essentially has replaced the official visit.
“Kids are getting advised to only speak to schools offering them,” Meyer said. “We had that happen this spring. We said, ‘Come to camp so we can get to know you.’ He said, ‘I’m not coming unless I’m offered.’ I can’t blame them. They have a couple of birds in hand. So we say, ‘OK, you’re offered.’ Then you think, ‘What if he takes it?’”
Another downside with the ramped-up recruiting is the increase of players de-committing and going elsewhere. Pelini wants to see the NCAA allow schools to pay for official visits for sophomores and juniors, which would enable parents to travel with their sons and be more a part of the decision process.
“You see a kid go on campus without his parents, and he gets caught up in the emotion of it and says, ‘I’m committing.’ And he gets home, and his parents say, ‘The heck you are.’ It’s crazy,” Pelini said.
“Who would they let their kid go on campus and decide where they’re going to spend the next four years of their life without being a part of that? And a lot of them can’t because they can’t afford it. If the NCAA would at least let one parent fly with a kid, you’d have less situations than we’re seeing.
“The rules just don’t fit the times right now.”
Some Big Ten coaches say they’re already keeping track of freshmen, but most were aghast at Washington dipping into the middle-school ranks.
“You have no way of knowing how that young man matures, nor does the young man even know who’s going to be coaching there,” Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio said.
But while none of them would have offered Martell a scholarship so early, one thing is certain: If he turns out to be a big-time prospect, they’re going to wish they did.
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