Spokane7
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February 1, 2012 in Sports
Recruiting process keeps getting dirtier
Mike Leach signs his first class of recruits today as football coach at Washington State and it’s ranked … 12th.
In the Pac-12.
(It used to be 10, you know, but they added two more schools to out-couch the Cougars.)
Nationally, the ranking is somewhere around 60, give or take a three-star linebacker and depending on your choice of recruiting guru and mountain top.
In other words, things haven’t really changed for the Cougars, other than the mind-boggling payroll spike.
This is a simplistic assessment, truly. Leach has been on the job for but two measly months, not nearly enough time for a high school senior to read the Cliffs Notes version of “Swing Your Sword,” much less absorb the entire text. Besides, every new coach gets a mulligan on his first class, assembled as it is on pretty much the same panic deadline as a Christmas bicycle.
Well, every coach except the last one. He’s still getting pounded for his first group.
Of course, UCLA has a new coach, too, and the Bruins are putting together a Top 15 class – and their guy hasn’t even written a book.
You don’t suppose weather, the beach, Hollywood and coeds strolling campus in cutoffs in January still mean the same thing to 18-year-old males as they used to, do you?
Nonetheless, it has been posited by those expert in these matters that whatever the number assigned to this Wazzu class, Leach has already made inroads on better players – which, for $2.2 million a year, he’d better. When the congregation gets the word from the man himself tonight, the reaction of choice will be the fist pump and not the shrug. And why not? If they aren’t going to get excited about the possibility of good times to come, what’s the point of all this?
Not that you couldn’t ask that question anyway.
Next to his team losing and whatever team he hates winning – and the damned media – what is it that most irritates the backside of the college sports fan?
Is it the kid who can’t seem to put his roach clip in storage? The kid who thinks nothing of gunning it up to 118 mph in a car he shouldn’t be driving anyway? Who throws a postgame punch? Who won’t pay his dues as a backup and transfers upon getting the word he won’t start? Who reneges on a “commitment”?
Is it the athlete’s sense of entitlement?
And is there a single enterprise that reinforces that affliction more with each passing year than the one that culminates today?
Look, recruiting has never been a Beaver Cleaver deal. Yes, it’s reasonably brightening – a kid gets a chance to go to college – but naturally the purported adults could never leave it at that. Which is why Eric Dickerson drove a black Trans Am as a high school senior and why Cecil Newton had his hand out for $180,000.
Mostly things aren’t so nakedly mercenary. Mostly it’s just broken pledges, look-the-other-way expedience and over-the-top obsessiveness.
Yes, this is something of a get-off-my-lawn moment.
Still, what is it that’s being taught when high schools sanction assemblies to parade their homecoming hero out to put a cap on his head, and when newspapers stream such nonsense over the Internet?
How many fan hits do you suppose the webcam trained at the fax machine at Woof U. across the state got last year?
How is it that a high school player spews the most vile, hateful stuff over his very public Twitter account, and exactly one of his suitors backs off with the thought that, hey, maybe there’s a character issue here?
Why isn’t it an institutional commitment when a coach tenders a scholarship offer to a player, but instead an offer that can be withdrawn by that coach’s replacement? After all, if the player wants out of a letter of intent if there’s a coaching change after his signing isn’t he often told he signed with the school and not the coach?
And how can anyone possibly say the word “commitment” with a straight face in recruiting anymore?
Leach, as was his right, honored only about half the offers to player who had committed to his predecessor. Coaches at nearly every college continued to pursue players who had announced their commitments to go elsewhere. Committed players were more than happy to have the wooing continued. There is more misdirection in the final 48 hours before signing day than you’ll see on any fall game day.
Why, just Tuesday, Washington received a commitment from a young wide receiver. He’ll probably be an impact player because he’s more developed than most of his peers.
See, he’d committed to USC and Cal before he committed to the Huskies.
Enjoy signing day. The circus starts anew on Thursday.
Blanchette: WSU legend Dietz gets his due 
liberal_in_right_wing_land on February 01 at 2:17 p.m.
I dont blame the kids for what is going on, I blame the ADULTS. The coaches, agents, families, “friends” or whoever else is telling these 17 and 18 year old kids not what is best for the kids, but what is best for the adults. The recruiting game is disgusting and gross and it has become that way by the adults and coaches cheating the system and bending the rules.
The biggest people to blame are the coaches….amazing how ANY coach can walk into a kids house and talk to them about character and honor…..no coach in college football has character or honor. Just look at UW, they hired two new coaches from Cal solely so raid Cal’s best recruits. These new coaches, who for years have been telling these kids that Cal is the best school for them and their futures, only to change the next day saying “Don’t go to Cal, they are horrible, come to UW, we are full of character and best for your future!”
How do ANY of these coaches sleep at night……of course the millions of dollars they are making I am sure helps with that.
dickkenn on February 02 at 10:23 a.m.
Safe to say ,I do not care for your articles , specially this one on recruiting. I know your kind of articles ,or slant on sports and recruiting has it’s place. On the farm in my days the outhouse is where this kind of thinking belongs. Most of the time i never read your type of thinking on things. I am not dissappointed, your still the same down writer. I wonder do you think if you wrote something upbeat , or even about the good kids or the good schools, that you would lose your credibleness among the people who read your articles? Maybe you do not know how anymore.
eclafitz on February 02 at 12:42 p.m.
Great article, the truth is sometimes unpopular. I’ve enjoyed your articles since I was a kid.