OT: Mack Brown Institutes the "Brady Hoke" Visit Policy
Looks as though other schools including Texas, Oregon, and Georgia Tech (do they have the recruiting clout to do this?? edit: Talking about GT here) are instituting a similar policy on recruit visits.
Right from the old man's mouth:
"The thing that we will do is we have allowed the kids to commit and still look around the last couple of years -- we're not doing that anymore," Brown said last week on Signing Day. "If you are committed to us, be committed. If you're going to go look, we're going to go look."
February 13th, 2013 at 10:13 PM ^
Hasn't Texas been doing this for a long time?
February 13th, 2013 at 10:24 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 10:14 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 11:06 PM ^
Who the hell is going to commit to Indiana with a rule like that? It works for the big boys but not the little guys.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:25 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 10:31 PM ^
They should do what they do for basketball where they have an early-sigining period. It really sets the kids who want to be there apart from the more weary recruits and makes the commit obviously more final.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:48 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 10:58 PM ^
Actually, ESPN might be all for it. Double the signing days!
But yes, probably won't happen, but it would be better if it did.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:58 PM ^
Although I don't believe ESPN has anything to say about it, one would think they would love two signing days.
February 14th, 2013 at 9:05 AM ^
It's not about ratings. It's about the programs not wanting to be stuck with LOIs of players that got hurt/didn't perform in their senior years. I don't know what's different about basketball, but for some reason it is.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:36 PM ^
Because unexpected events can still happen. Say a kid commits to a school and then that school fires the head coach (or even a position coach), or the head coach leaves for the NFL. If the kid already signed their LOI, they would not be able to jump ship. Now imagine that a kid commits to an out-of-state school. Then his father gets deathly ill and he decides he'd rather go to school close to home.
If kids were forced to sign their LOI when they commit, then you would see far fewer commitments until signing day, which would be impractical for coaches and players alike.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:59 PM ^
Ummm, shit like that happens in basketball recruiting too. You can get a waiver and the NCAA will release you from the LOI. I don't think you'd see a big drop in commitments. With the new rules re: recruiting, allowing more contact b/w coaches and recruits, I think you'd see plenty of kids sign during an early signing period to end the stressful process. An early signing period is actually practical for everyone. Players that are truly ready to end the process can sign and don't have to worry about hearing from anyone that isn't on the staff they committed to. Coaches also don't have to keep tabs on every single recruit. When they get that early LOI, they can focus on other targets.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:56 PM ^
If anything changes, it will be instituting an early signing period, which I'm a huge proponent of.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:34 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 10:42 PM ^
I was referring to GT
February 13th, 2013 at 10:51 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 10:47 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 11:00 PM ^
February 13th, 2013 at 11:01 PM ^
NCAA can't really institute policies on verbal commitments. There's no way to regulate that.
February 13th, 2013 at 11:11 PM ^
Commitments are unofficial, it's only a verbal promise. The NCAA has no ability to prevent kids from verbally promising anything to anyone, let alone a coach. The NCAA can control how much coaches talk to players, but not what they say.
EDIT: beat to the punch
February 14th, 2013 at 12:06 AM ^
I am guessing Mack Brown was sick of seeing kids bail. Texas had four kids that decommitted, including Ricky Seals-Jones who ended up at Texas A&M. I'd be a unhappy too, if I was Mack Brown.
February 14th, 2013 at 5:43 AM ^
I am still perplexed as to how Texas is still committed to Mack Brown.
February 14th, 2013 at 7:10 AM ^
The Texas fanbase doesn't seem to be "still committed to Mack Brown." He must have something on some pretty powerful people at the top of the foodchain.
February 14th, 2013 at 8:53 AM ^
Or he's a guy who pulled the program out of the cutter in the '90s and has actually racked up a great legacy at Texas (134-44 record, just shy of 80%, with a national title and two conference titles - Compare that to Carr, who had a winning percentage in the 75% range, with one national title and five conference titles). He's had one bad season (5-7) and two mediocre seasons (8-5, 9-4) lately, which is the worst three year stretch in his tenure. With the relatively recent changes at the coordinator level, Texas will probably continue to claw their way back up to the upper echelon.
I get that Longhorn fans want him gone and I have no real interest in seeing him stick around, but it's no mystery why UT has held on to him.
February 14th, 2013 at 7:43 AM ^
Good for them... Cut down on the damn games that come with committing.
February 14th, 2013 at 8:44 AM ^
ESPN's Recruiting Nation had an interesting piece here - LINK
I found this passage striking, and really, true:
"Really, it's up to the kids to determine the fate of these no-visit policies, because for the only time in their amateur careers, they hold the cards. Once a recruit signs that letter of intent, the college essentially owns him."
That's what sort of leads me to think that a program like Texas that is faltering some suddenly instituting such a policy seems more like it comes from shaken confidence in the Texas brand than from anything else.
They actually talk to Dan Samuelson in this article, and he talks some about his own experience and ultimately coming to Michigan and how despite having decommitted from Pittsburgh and, of course, Nebraska, he believes he did the right thing in the end.
February 14th, 2013 at 2:08 PM ^
Would be cool if the rule was the Hoke Way.