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I’ve been asked this question a couple of times in different forms over the last couple of months: Where’s your football recruiting page?
Answer: You won’t find one on rodfrisco.com. Ever.
I’m sure this will shock some people, but I think college recruiting is the most ridiculous scholastic sports exercise out there. I’m serious.
Football game ... or recruiting show?
So, yeah, people are interested in recruiting. Even I’m interested in the bottom line when the blessed day arrives. So why, then, the antipathy toward recruiting? Let me count the ways.
(1) The utter abuse of the word “commitment.”
This has become one of the biggest sicknesses infecting scholastic sports, the hard push to get an athlete to “commit” to a school. That has become a farce in many instances. A player makes a commitment in July, only to change his mind in January. That’s not exactly a commitment, especially when the schools that failed to receive the commitment keep ratcheting up the pressure in the interim.
That has led to a fairly new verb that is now breezily tossed about in recruiting stories: de-commited. De-commited? What kind of word is that? Simply put, if one can airily “de-commit” just by saying so, it was never a commitment in the first place. I’ve experienced “de-commitment” first-hand. According to the thick sheaf of papers sitting in my file cabinet, it’s actually called “divorce.”
A few years back, I stopped using the phrase “verbal commitment” to describe an athlete’s decision to attend college, substituting instead the phrase “verbal declaration.” To me, the phrase more accurately depicted that first phase of the selection process. With no papers signed, no scholarship exchanged, it is anything but a commitment.
I’m not saying I was the first person in the country to do use the phrase, but I guarantee you I was in the lead wagon train. I had never seen the phrase in print before the night I was sitting at my desk at The Patriot-News, fed up at doing my second “de-commitment” story of the year when I decided to end the use of “verbal commitment” forever. Even though the vast majority of athletes stick with their first choice, it simply can’t be called a commitment.
(2) Roughly 4 million students enroll in a college or university each year.
It’s not as if attending college is something unique, especially these days. So why do we make such a big deal out of the ones who go to college on athletic scholarship? Don’t get me wrong; I think any time an athlete can get some bucks for his or her education, it a good thing.
But think about the core of the announcement. In the end, it’s a high school kid saying he’s going to college. Excellent, young man! You’re one in four million!
(3) It promotes a shrouded existence.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked kids about their recruiting process and, because they’re afraid to say anything lest in be misinterpreted, run from the question, even if it was asked off-the-record. In fact, I almost always did my recruiting checks off the record just so athletes and coaches wouldn’t worry about what would show up in The Patriot-News the next day.
But goodness gracious, why should an athlete ever feel the need to pull a hood over his head just because of recruiting? It happens with friends, not just media. They tired of hearing the same questions and repeating the same numb answer. I got that, and I had sympathy for that. That’s why I backed off in my latter years at the P-N and certainly will not make recruiting a feature of this website.
(4) High school press conferences are just plain silly.
The greatest thing about covering high schools is the one-on-one interaction you have with everyone involved: Athletes, coaches, fans (even angry ones). There are virtually no filters … until the day of the dreaded Press Conference.
Here’s what happens at a press conference for a high school athlete announcing his college choice, at least below the Terelle Pryor / Ringling Bros. level: A table is set up in a gym or a cafeteria or a library. The athlete is there, often with Mom and Dad, possibly some family members and a few teammates. Maybe there’s a cake.
The coach introduces the athlete, which is the start of the silliness: every single person in the room knows him. Of course, Mom, Dad, Gramps, Granny get their call, which is nice. The floor is turned over to the student, who is sometimes confident enough to wing it, or is so nervous he reads a prepared text. Then he throws on the obligatory school ballcap or T-shirt or sweatshirt, and everyone applauds. Just once I’d like to see the announcement made with no gear in sight just for the sheer simplicity and soberness of the moment.
All of this time, the cameras are rolling and clicking. And then … there’s this uncomfortable and awkward silence. As in, um, what’s next?
There really isn’t much next to it. The TV guys might ask a question or two, often to have them sign a piece of paper that isn’t the actual letter of intent just to give the illusion that’s what happened.
I never asked a question at that point of the presser. I always waited until all of the pictures were taken, all of the hands were shaken. Only then did I wade in and start talking to the athletes … one-on-one, just like out on the football field or in the gym.
It’s not that I was saving some piercing question. My first question was always “Why Tech U?” and simply moved on from there. It’s just that I thought the press conference setting was a completely unnecessary trapping. And, although I never did this, I always felt like going into the hallway, finding some kid going to college on academic scholarship and interviewing him. I mean, he’s going to college, too, right?
And (5) the recruiting geeks are insane.
Simply put, it seems like a weird, creepy existence getting all immersed in 40 times. Forget it.
I’m sure some people will be quick to point out that I’m criticizing the very attitude that enables the website to successfully exist. Public excitement about sports far supersedes that of other high school events, for good or bad. After all, one football game often outdraws graduation.
So I’ll be accused of biting the hand that feeds me untrue as that might be. Recruiting doesn’t feed me and it certainly doesn’y inspire me. It never has, even though I’ll happily post a story about an athlete’s college decision. My priority has always been on the athlete’s accomplishments, the results of games and how those results effect the schools and the communities and the politics that surround high school athletics.
That’s my world, and I love it. Recruiting? No thanks.
