By Nate Dougherty
To address this acceleration of the recruiting process and alleviate the pressures on both student-athletes and coaching staffs, many coaches and administrators believe football should institute an early signing day for National Letters of Intent. This would allow athletes to make a binding commitment before the current February signing date and put the recruiting process behind them, possibly even before they begin their final season of high school football. But the idea is a contentious one, with strong beliefs held on both sides, and even supporters of an early signing period disagree on when one should be held.
When he was a standout high school quarterback in 1980, Todd Dodge didn’t face much of a recruiting crush. In fact, the busiest period was the last month before the February signing day, even though Dodge was one of the nation’s top prospects. Now, a generation later, as Head Coach at the University of North Texas and father of a top high school quarterback, Dodge is witnessing an entirely different recruiting game. Like many highly sought after players, Riley Dodge made an early commitment shortly after his junior year at Southlake (Texas) Carroll High School. He later changed his mind and decided to follow his father to North Texas.
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An Early Solution
The prospect of having an early signing date has been floating around for more than two decades, but it appears to be gaining some new traction as coaches search for ways to counter the ever-escalating recruiting pressure. At their annual spring meeting, football coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference asked league leadership to develop a proposal for an early signing date, an idea that’s also supported by the Big 12 Conference. For a change to occur, it must be passed by the Collegiate Commissioners Association, the group which administers the National Letter of Intent. But the commissioners have shown no inclination to implement an early signing day on their own, leaving it to football coaches to ask for one.
Jack Cosgrove, Head Coach at the University of Maine, says letting student-athletes sign with their school earlier than February of their senior year would help alleviate pressure they face from recruiters and allow them to focus on their high school studies and teams. And with so many players making early verbal commitments anyway, he says giving these commitments official standing wouldn’t change that much.
“Essentially, what we have now is an early signing period, just not a binding one,” Cosgrove says. “But having an official early signing day would at least reduce the number commitments that aren’t honored by one side or the other.
“If you’re a 16-year-old kid and a coach keeps calling and contacting you, how do you say no?” Cosgrove continues. “An early signing period would allow an athlete to make a formal commitment and avoid the coaches who continue to pursue someone who’s made a verbal commitment somewhere, but hasn’t signed.”
Dodge says a signing date in late summer could take pressure off both student-athletes and college coaching staffs. “The recruiting process seems like a lot of glitz and glamour, but some players—like my son—just want to get it done with,” he says. “And at mid-major schools where we might put a lot of time and effort into recruiting a player, early signings would give us the last three or four months in the process to spend our time and money wisely rather than trying to keep on a kid who may leave for a bigger school anyway.”
Against Opposition
If an early signing date were instituted, it would first have to overcome strong opposition from coaches who believe it would create more work for them while affording less time to evaluate potential recruits. This May, coaches in the SEC voted 9-3 against recommending an early signing day, and Pac-10 Conference coaches turned down the idea by a 9-1 vote.
Mike Slive, Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and chair of the steering committee for the National Letter of Intent, says there is a concern that with less time to judge a student-athlete’s character and commitment in the classroom, an early signing day could lock in players who are not a good fit for their new school. “Our coaches (in the SEC) are not in favor of an early signing date because the majority feel they need that extra time,” Slive says. “The more an institution knows about a young man’s academic record and his character, the better a decision can be made by the coach, the institution, and the prospect. One thing delaying the decision process does is provide more academic records for the coach, as well as more time to evaluate the young man’s conduct and character to know whether he’ll fit in the institution."
There’s also debate about whether an early signing date would really change the recruiting process. “There’s concern that it would push everything forward,” says Grant Teaff, Executive Director of the American Football Coaches Association. “Coaches who have put a lot of thought into it say if we have an early signing date, that becomes the signing date, and a lot of them are queasy about pushing that up.”
Backing Off
While some coaches and conferences would prefer an early signing period in the winter—the ACC proposal called for a December date—others prefer summer, before football season begins. With a consensus unlikely to emerge, many coaches feel something else needs to be done to stem the tide of pressure on today’s student-athletes. Cosgrove believes as younger and younger players feel pressured to choose a school, it will inevitably lead to more problems unless coaches agree to back off.
“As coaches, if we don’t institute an early signing day, we at least need to back off in how early we approach these players,” Cosgrove says. “Many of them simply are not ready to make a decision of that magnitude.”
Though Dodge says only the nation’s top prospects receive such heavy attention from the time they’re underclassmen, more players are coming to believe that level of attention is the norm. “There’s a lot of anxiety for players and their parents when they don’t have an offer before their senior year,” Dodge says. “I feel like we all need to explain to athletes and families that the majority of recruiting is done the old-fashioned way. We should encourage those kids to keep working hard and have a good senior year.
“Some of these players may be on a team where five guys go on to play Division I, and three of them have multiple offers before their senior year,” he continues. “Other players start to think that’s just how the process works, and we need to explain that probably 70 percent of people who end up signing don’t commit early or receive an offer from the school they eventually choose until after their senior year starts.”
To help his players handle the attention of the recruiting process, Mark Crabtree, Head Coach at Dublin (Ohio) Coffman High School, makes sure they have people around them who will help them make wise decisions. And he tries to keep them out of the process entirely while they’re still underclassmen.
“When I have a player being recruited, I take a proactive approach and try to get the family involved, because I know they’ll be able to do a better job for that athlete than I can,” Crabtree says. “But I personally don’t like to even get a player involved until he’s a junior. When he’s done with his junior season, I’ll have him make his highlight film and mail it out. Regardless of what people say, after the junior year is not too late to get things started.”
Nate Dougherty is an Assistant Editor at Athletic Management.