#11 Recruiting Corner: Restricting Transfers, Recruiting as a Spectacle?, Are Today’s Parents Too Involved?
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Josh: Hey guys, we are now in the third week of February. Welcome back to
another round of the Recruiting Corner. Welcoming to the recruiting panel
Andrew Bruno, how are you doing?
Andrew: Hey Josh, I’m excited to be here today.
Josh: Fantastic. As we have some stuff to go through, but first, I know
you want to mention something about Google Plus.
Andrew: Real quick guys, Athnet, if you add us on Google Plus Athnet we’ll
send you access to our coaches database and it has all coaches contact
information, email phone and also great information on schools. Such as
location, tuition, everything you need to know, it’s great recruiting tool.
If you have any questions on how to add us on Google Plus, just give us a
Tweet add @AndrewFBruno, @Athnet, or @JZimmy67, or you can send an email to
info@athleticscholarships.com.
Josh: You sounded just like infomercial there, I loved it. So yes,
definitely Google Plus is happening, and we’re glad to be a part of it, and
you know we love our social media. So we’re going to jump right in get our
feet wet. All right, so multi-year scholarships is one of the topics we’re
going to cover today, just a quick brief mention.
We’re going to talk about transfer restrictions. We’re going to talk about
whether recruiting should or should not be the spectacle that it has
become. We’re going to talk about whether coaches should be able to hire
other high-school coaches for recruiting advantages as well as talking
about parenting. Whether your parent might be a good sports parent, or a
very bad sports parent, so lots of things to cover. First off last week we
covered in the episode multi-year scholarships with the vote. Whether it
was going to be upheld or overturned. It wasn’t overturned, so schools now
have the option of being able to provide multi-year scholarships for
athletes. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
Andrew: Yes, it will be a big recruiting advantage for the schools that can
afford to give out multi-year scholarships.
Josh: Definitely. So guys, first blog we’re going to jump into is one of
my favorites, it’s Dr. Saturday. Graham Watson wrote an article that
talked about the fall out between Randy Edsall and Danny-O-Brien. Danny-O-
Brien was his star quarterback last year. All the sudden Danny-O-Brien
decided he wants to transfer. Randy Edsall says, you can transfer, but you
can’t transfer to any of the ACC schools, nor can you transfer to
Vanderbilt. Is that even fair?
Andrew: It’s not fair. The NCAA touts a student athlete as being the most
important thing is their education, their experience, but really at the end
of the day, coaches have all the power. They can tell athletes where they
can, and can’t transfer. Athletes can’t even talk to another coach until
they get a release. At the end of the day, what’s the most important, the
athletes education, and the athletes athletic experience. The current
rules really hurt athletes.
Josh: I completely agree. Andrew made a great point there with the
release. Listen, if you want to transfer that’s fine. Put yourself in
that mess, because it is confusing, and it is not easy. Also you have to
approach your coach and the athletic department to get what’s called
permission to contact. No coach can contact you until you have that. At
least in division one, and division two. So keep that in mind, it’s not
easy, and plus, the interesting part about this whole situation, is that
Randy Edsall can decide who can and can’t transfer from his program, and
where they can go, yet every coach in college sports, not just football,
college sports can transfer to any school they want, without restrictions.
Andrew: We just saw it happen a couple of weeks ago with Greg Schiano, he
left Rutgers to go to Tampa Bay in the NFL, and Rutgers ended up losing out
on a lot of recruits because of it, a lot of top recruits.
Josh: Not just Greg Shiano, Lane Kiffin, Todd Graham, there’s a mess of
coaches that do this year in and year out.
Andrew: Happens every year.
Josh: All they have to do is pay a small fine as part of the millions of
dollars they make a year, and they get to go anywhere and they really screw
programs for long periods of time when they decide to do that. Yet a
player can’t transfer to another program where he might get a great
education.
Andrew: Or maybe he wants to study something that’s offered at a different
school, but he can’t because of football restrictions.
Josh: It’s definitely not fun guys. Next we have two articles that are
sort of divided around Devante Neal. The first one is by writer Alex
Williams in the Daily Wildcat. He wrote an article that basically talked
about the spectacle high school recruiting has become. And whether or not
it’s really worth the time and effort that we put in to these athletes that
might be busting college. I’m going to ask your opinion but before I ask
your opinion. I just want to make a point. Remember that with the NFL,
and when they passed the new CBA, a huge part of that collective bargaining
agreement was that fact that rookies, unproven rookies make way too much
money. The veterans don’t make enough. So these veterans had to prove
themselves over seasons and become great athletes aren’t making enough
money, while these kids that are coming straight out of college are making
fortunes.
Andrew: 50 million guaranteed.
Josh: Exactly, so basically we look at that and say, OK. The NFL fixed
that and said, you know what, we recognize this is an issue. Are we
spending too much time, effort and money and these coaches, all this time
they put forth towards these athletes when they might, or might not be the
next greatest thing.
Andrew: Absolutely. There’s two big reasons that this is bad for athletes.
The first is that these athletes that are getting recruited in the
spectacle surrounding them, it’s detrimental to them because there’s so
much pressure placed on them. They’re young kids, they’re in high school,
they’re living with their parents. I mean going to college in and of
itself is a lot of pressure, but then all the added media coverage, it’s
tough for them, but the other thing it effects the other 98, 99% of
athletes out there that aren’t the top recruits. I mean they see, you tune
in to ESPN on national signing day and you see all the recruits up there,
where they’re signing. It makes athletes think that, hey coaches if I’m
good enough will come and find me. We preach here at Athnet all the time
that, you need to be proactive and go out there. Talk to the coaches at
the schools you’re interested in. Take your recruiting into your own
hands. It’s not like it is for the top 1%.
Josh: And there’s one huge keyword in there, that’s “pro”-“active”.
Listen, you’re probably, likely, almost guaranteed to be in that 99%.
Congratulations if you’re in that 1%, but the rest of the world is part of
that 99%. Which means that you’re probably not going to be on the ESPN
(?). You’re probably not ranked by rivals, you’re probably not ranked by
[Max Preps], or any other ranking media site. Listen, you have to go out
and make things happen. Unfortunately yes, we spend way too much time and
energy, and effort towards that 1% and not enough time promoting that 99%.
Promote yourself, do what you need to do to make things happen, and don’t
get caught in the spectacle.
The next article on Devante Neal, and just to introduce him. Five star
athlete, out of Arizona. One of the top prospects in the country. When
Rich Rodriguez was hired by University of Arizona he basically made it a
point that Devante Neal was going to be his go to recruit. That’s the kid
he wanted out of the State of Arizona. He was going to recruit in his
backyard, to do that, and I love this. To do that, and to give him the
advantage, he hires Devante Neal’s high school coach as the recruiting
liaison for the State of Arizona. Is that even near being legal?
Andrew: It’s legal right now in football. They just outlawed it in
basketball. AU coaches would have a lot of power in where kids would go,
because the top AU teams would shuffle the best players to certain
programs. Those coaches would (?) get hired by those programs, but in
football right now, it’s not illegal but it probably should be. Not all
schools are able to hire coaches, and also again we come back to the point
we just talked about. It’s not in the athletes best interest if you hire
somebodies high school coach just to get them to come to school just
because you want them to play for you.
Josh: The interesting part with that, and it sort of backfired for Arizona,
because Devante Neal, he wanted to go to Arizona, but his father wanted him
to go to Notre Dame. We covered a few episodes ago about the influence
your parents have on your decisions. And he ended up going to Notre Dame
which means, although Rich Rodriguez got a couple of great instate
recruits, he did not get his holy grail of recruits for this year.
Andrew: He maybe now stuck with somebody he didn’t actual want to work for
him. Maybe he is qualified.
Josh: We want to think that Rich Rodriguez hired this coach on merit, and
said, maybe he’s a great guy, maybe they have a relationship [whatever it
is], but.
Andrew: It’s tough to say.
Josh: I’m pretty sure there’s a hidden agenda there. Especially when you
come out and say that I want this kid, and oh, you just happen to be his
high school coach. Next article guys, Steven Henson wrote an article
titled, “What makes a nightmare sports parent, and what makes a great one”.
And this is interesting because there were two gentle that spent three
decades. That’s older than I am, well older than what you guys are, three
decades polling college athletes, interviewing them about how they felt
their parents were involved. Basically how they felt on their parents
involvement in their youth sports, high school sports and collegic sports,
and basically their reactions towards it. They came up with a criteria on
what makes a great sports parent, and really where the bad sports parents
fell into. Read the article, we’re putting it into the notes at the
bottom. But besides that, my question for you is, are parents too involved
theses days with their athletes lives?
Andrew: It’s tough to generalize because there’s a lot of great parents out
there. There’s are a lot of parents who are too overbearing, and the
majority of you fall right there in the middle. But we’ve seen it, we’ve
seen it happen. We know a kid who was a ESPN top 40 recruit and his dad
got too involved. Told college coaches how it was going to be, what he
wanted. What the dad wanted, everything about the dad, and the kid ended
up having to go to a division two school, because all the division one
offers dried up. Division two is still great level of competition, but for
a top 40 recruit it’s not the way it should be.
Josh: And that’s the deal right there. If you’re a parent, listen, support
your kid, help your kid out. Financially support them if they need to go
make visits and camps and stuff. But make sure you’re not picking up the
phone and calling coaches. They don’t want to hear from you. Make sure
you’re supporting your son or daughter to pick up the phone and call
coaches. Try not to get too involved because problems like this do happen.
Listen, I love to call them American Idol parents. That’s because you
feel that your child is the best in the world. Whether they are or not,
that’s great if your child is a great athlete, but there’s other great
athletes out there, and coaches recognize talent. It’s not your job to
sell your child. It’s your child’s job to sell themselves. If a coach
feels that the child is talented enough, and mature enough to get a
scholarship, or a walk-on opportunity, or have an opportunity just to be
part of college athletics, then it’s going to happen. As long as you make
it happen, but don’t push too much, all right. So that’s what we have
today. I’m going to jump off my soapbox there for a minute and wish you
guys the best. Thanks for tuning in. If you have questions, you ever want
to say anything to us, definitely contact us. That’s @andrewfbruno, @athnet,
and @JZimmy67, you guys have a great one thanks.
Andrew: Thanks a lot guys, don’t forget to add us on Google Plus.
Josh: There you go.