OT: Clemson Recruit Demands Offer for Teammate
Please forgive and delete if this has been previously posted. Otherwise, interesting power-play by a big-time recruit. On one hand, he's looking out for his boy. On the other hand, he's being a petulant child demanding his way. Curious as to how Coach Hoke would handle such a situation. My guess: we'll offer your teammate if WE (coaching staff) see fit, and we won't beg you to stay.
but I don't see anything wrong with it. This is the only time he'll have real leverage with his college team, and he's using it to help out his friends (rather than, say, asking for cash in a duffel bag or something). I'd completely understand if Clemson said "no," but I don't understand the backlash he's getting for saying it.
If I were the coach (which admittedly I’m not for very good reasons), this would really upset me. It’s a no win situation for him. If he says no, he risks losing out on a highly rated recruit. If he says yes, that send a horrible message to the rest of the team, and it suggests that he doesn’t fully have control over his program. This is something that should have remained private. That the kid is talking to the media about it is what’s especially annoying. The most this should have been is the kid bringing his friend’s film to the coaching staff’s attention. Anything exceeding that is improper.
He has skills that everyone wants, and he's leveraging those in a way that is completely within the rules. He's not even doing it for himself for the most part; he's helping a friend out (who, for the record, has an Ole Miss offer and isn't a completely random guy). Coaches do this all the time to get raises, and people generally do this all the time in their own jobs. Because he's a 17 year old football player rather than a 35 year old IT manager, it's somehow totally wrong?
Exactly. If Robert N was the #1 ranked, I dunno, chemical engineer in the U.S (if they kept track of that stuff)...he'd demand people treat him like it. I'm sure he worked extremely hard to be the 1 HS player.
There is nothing separating the scholarship that #1 HS players like Jimmy Clausen, Terrelle Pryor, Bryce Brown, Jadeveon Clowney, etc get....from the scholarships that a random 3 star recruit gets. They both get put through school. anything else is a "NCAA violation".
Disregarding the fact that the NCAA thinks itself to be judge, jury, and executioner and that if a booster tried to hook me up with a discounted car for being a great engineer, i'd be all about it... but such things are unethical in the NCAA's eyes...
Before he becomes a cog in the Clemson football money making machine, why not ask for something extra? Instead of doing a stupid hat ceremony and thriving off attention, why not, uh, get something worthwhile?
This high school kid hasn't played a down of college football and there have been numerous top ten recruits who didn't dominate the way they were supposed to.
Bioengineers right out of college. Go into a workplace and say I got a 4.0 gpa honors whatever. I'll only sign with you if you hire my less talented friend as well. See how that goes over with management and if they agree, other employees.
It undermines team cohesion by setting some players above others. And if you give into the demands of one child, the other children will take note and adjust expectations accordingly. It also potentially takes a roster spot from someone more deserving. It suggests that a child and member of the team is not quite as subordinate to the coach as they, for practical reasons, actually are. The institution should be above one kid, is what it comes down to. At least for me.
He's a 16-18 year old who also happens to be the best high school football player in the country.
It also undermines cohesion when a guy working at a bank says "I'm leaving unless you give me more money." Unless you think that's similarly wrong, then I don't understand the distinction, other than that we've got this absurd notion that college football players can't act like other employees.
I’m sorry, but I do not view college football players as employees. And I don’t view a bank as a team. The two aren’t analogous, at least to my thinking. Also, I’m 19, and would not consider myself an adult. I don’t think that’s offensive at all.
When Nkemdiche signs a letter of intent, he's receving a salary (a scholarship) in return for services (playing college football and making Clemson a lot of money). That looks a lot like an employer-employee relationship to me. And once he's there, he's got no leverage at all. If he wants to leave, he has to sit out a year, but the team can dismiss him whenever they want.
And whether or not a bank is a "team," it absolutely has an impact on morale if the bank manager says he's leaving unless he gets more cash. Anyone who has worked in a toxic work environment can attest to that. But no one thinks the bank manager isn't allowed to make demands to his bosses.
I think we can agree that academic scholarships do not fall into the realm of an employer/employee relationship. I concede that the question is more difficult to answer in the case of football players on scholarship because the University receives substantial monetary gain from such an agreement. However, the two scenarios are not entirely remote from each other. In the case of the academic scholarship, the University also does receive some form of gain. We can logically conclude this is true, because otherwise there is no compelling reason to hand out academic scholarships (if you can think of one, please share it).
I believe the question is further illuminated when you look at athletic scholarships for non revenue sports. In this instance, the University does not receive the monetary gain they do in the case of football scholarships. Is this an employment contract? According to you it entails a salary and services.
As far as the bank, I believe you misunderstood my point. Cohesion is inherently essential to success as a football team. Plenty of people complete their work next to coworkers they dislike, though.
IMO big difference between demanding salary and dictating personnel decisions
and it's fairly common when a partner at one firm is looking to jump to another firm for the partner to say "I will come, but I have to be able to bring these 3 people." Inappropriate?
Not inappropriate but not analogous either. A partner switching firms compared to a HS student dictating one or more of 85 positions. I find the first palatable the second not.
In each case the employer has to do an EV calculation. "Does the potential downside of bringing on the extra person [or 3 people or whatever] outweigh the benefit of getting this guy I really want?" The scholarship limit makes the calculus more difficult for the coach (and should make him more likely to say no), but I don't get why it changes the nature of the demand or the analysis.
I don’t presume to speak for gordie bell, but to me at least it’s because you’ve yet to demonstrate that the University in this instance is in fact an employer. I’m not convinced of that, and thus (largely I suspect) our difference of opinion.
without getting into the topic of compensation and everything, it should be pretty obvious that a football coach is a manager with a certain amount of capital (in the form of scholarships) to spend on creating a winning team, much like a managing partner at a law firm has a certain amount of capital to create a winning team (likely in the financial side of things, but it can be broken down to winning and losing as well).
Each needs to make choices about how best to spend their capital, whether it's one scholarship out of eighty-five or one million dollars out of an eighty-five million dollar budget.
The existence of parallels to employment relationships does not, by itself, demonstrate that this is in fact an employment relationship. You can draw the same tentative parallels with admissions offices/ academic scholarships (clearly not an employment relationship).
in terms of attempting to leverage capital, what's the difference between a law firm and a football team in this case? Like I said, it's up to the coaches to determine which brings the better value: getting the asset plus some extra weight, or not taking the weight but not acquiring the asset.
I don't see where a distinction of "employer" is particularly relevant.
I’m not good at trying to respond to multiple people at a time, sorry. It first became important when AAB used the analogy of an IT worker negotiating for a higher salary to argue that if it’s ok for him to do it, why not this football player? He then used a similar analogy to respond to my objection (in which I tried to explain why it was different in the case of football players). The distinction is (or was) important as part of my discussion with AAB, and I got that garbled (didn’t convey that properly) when first responding to you. As far as I was aware, it was the basis on which AAB was making his argument.
Clemson's football program makes like 30 million dollars a year off of the performance of people like Robert Nkemdiche, and is not offering him a scholarship out of the goodness of their heart or to help disadvantaged kids. They're offering him a full ride because they think he can help them win football games and bring in even more money to the athletic department as part of what is a billion dollar national business. I think to claim he's not going to Clemson (or wherever) to do the "job" of "college football player" is to ignore the realities of what modern college football is.
I really am interested in what you have to say, and not just arguing to argue. I’m curious what your reply is to my previous post where I asked whether you regarded academic scholarships and scholarships for non revenue sports as employment relationships. If no, is it a matter of degree of gain for the University, or type of gain? Something I haven’t even considered? (I do appreciate the patience you’ve shown me so far).
There are certain scholarships that clearly aren't employee-employer (ones based on economic hardship for example). If a school offered a student a full ride for economic hardship reasons, and the student insisted they offer one to his friend too, I would consider that an absurd dick move. A kid on the baseball team is one I don't have a well-thought-out answer for, but would probably see as more similar to football than an economic hardship scholarship, as the university is offering the ride to get something tangible (a better baseball team) rather than to sue a social mission.
And yeah, you'll probably respond by saying that economic hardship scholarships improve diversity/diversity of background etc. and give the university a tangible benefit, and I don't have a great answer for that other than that it just seems different.
I can accept that we’re just going to disagree on this. Thank you for the discussion though, one of my favorite (or most interesting) exchanges on this site so far.
You being a lawyer explains a lot here. You seem to be simply trying to win an argument at this point. You clearly have the intelligence to see the difference between a kid who is not even a member of a football team yet making personnel demands of a head coach and somebody switching jobs.
If you can't understand why allowing recruits to wield this sort of power would be horrible for a football team and for college football in general then, again, I don't know what to say.
Once he's there he can transfer, or he can leave early for the NFL.
I don't think you can go from "I'm OK with it because he's not asking for more money for himself" to "I'm OK with it because it's the same as an employee asking for more money for himself."
I agree with Owl. It was a really immature move by Nkemdiche to go public with that demand, and it put the Clemson coaches in a really tough spot.
Edit: and by the way it also put his buddy in a tough spot. Now if he's offered by Clemson the whole world, including his teammates, will just look at him as a guy who didn't earn his spot. "You're only here because you're tight with the right guy. You're not a teammate, you're just a posse."
I'm not going from one to the other. I'm okay with it because it's the same as an employee asking for more money for himself. The fact that he's helping out a buddy just makes it more admirable in my view. And I'd guess putting the Clemson coaches in a tough spot was the point. It maximizes the leverage he has. I still haven't heard a good reason for why high school football players aren't allowed to exert leverage in situations where we'd let any employee do so. It seems to be premised on the idea that college football isn't a job, but that's belied by basically every aspect of moden college football.
I don't have a real big problem with it on principle. I do have a huge problem with taking it public. Exert your leverage, don't embarrass people with it.
Actually, it's premised on the idea that high school kids shouldn't be allowed to run college football programs.
If I were a coach at Clemson, I wouldn't feel I was put in a tough spot at all. I would feel as though I were just handed a perfect opportunity to rid my program of a future cancer.
I don't know what to say to you if you don't see the problem with allowing kids to pull this kind of stuff. It seems you're not really thinking this through. I would pull this kid's scholarship in a heartbeat.
we should never mention to the Cass Tech kids that they will have the opportunity to play with former teammates? If Shane gets in contact with a four star receiver that wasn't on Michigan's radar we shouldn't offer him because it's providing Shane with more than a standard scholarship?
The practice of offering teammates and friends of high profile recruits is something Michigan and probably every other school in the nation has benefited from. How could you possibly say that giving a student a full-ride scholarship is an impermissible benefit for a teammate?
What I wouldn't have given to be offered a full ride scholarship to play big time college football and this kid feels so entitled that he is threatening to walk away from his commitment because his little friend has not been offered.
Attacking the kid for being "greedy". How cliche.
let's play devil's advocate for a minute.
Clemson will make millions in part off this kid. Once he signs over to the team and the NCAA, he will have no power in anything. So he's looking out for his homies. Why not? No one HAS to say yes.
Anyone who has ever leveraged one job offer for a second, better offer is a hypocrite if they criticize him.
I cannot feel sorry for college football coaches. They make serious bank and jump between jobs, leaving behind half-finished recruiting classes and sweet-talked parents who believed that Coach X would, yes, truly look after their kid and make things right.
Clemson will make millions whether this kid attends or not.
Either way Clemson will suck. So would Ole Miss. Just a matter of time before he rolls tide and geaux tigers.
I am too lazy to read the whole story. Is he asking for a scholarship for his buddy? What if the coaches agreed to put him on the team as a preferred walk on or something.
I don't necessarily see the harm in what this kid is doing, but it is a bit odd. Wonder if more players have done this before, or will begin to do so now that his story is getting some national attention.
It's not his first demand from them, though, and he's already committed. He already demanded they offer another teammate and he then committed, now he's saying they need to do it again or he decommits. They have something like 3 of his teammates committed to this class. Now i don't wonder why our coaches never offered him.
I hope Clemson tells him to go to hell. You might be good at football, but that doesn't give you the right to dictate scholarship distribution. Honestly, if he's like this now, what's he going to be dictating when/if he's an established star on the team?
The sad thing is, even if Clemson doesn't give the scholarship and Nkemdiche bails, Ole Miss already offered that friend a scholarship in anticipation. Either way he gets what he wants. Which is perhaps the most disconcerting thing of all: if he leaves, he has no loyalty to the school, he just wants the program that's most prepared to bend over backward for him.
They'll stay bad, too, if they have to fill their roster with every 2 star teammate of their top prospects. Pretty soon this kids gonna be saying "you need to play my friend more or I'm transferring"
there is no player in the country worth two scholarships.. well. Denard. Because hes fast enough to be in two places at once.
I think I remember some coach doing that once, he signed around 20 defensive backs in 3 years after we already had taken 5 the year before. What ever happened to him anyways?