Recruiting Season Smells Like Children

I’ve been watching Friday Night Lights and I’m probably 3/4 of the way through Season 2.  The tremendously talented Smash Williams just offered a verbal commitment to Rick Barnes, who was serving as an agent of the fictional TMU (texas methodist university).  He had overtures from the University of Alabama, Michigan, tiny Whitmore College, Miami Southern (also fictional) among others, and he decided to stick with his home state TMU, stating it’d always been his dream.

During the recruiting saga, his mother was accosted by an overzealous recruiter offering his mother a job and money to land him at Oklahoma Tech and a guarantee of Smash getting a shot at NFL dreams.  He had multiple visits at his house from recruiters.  He had a debauched party with the wild players at TMU.  And he got into an extremely intense argument with his mother over his process.

Between doing this show every week and watching Smash go through the process of being a highly touted recruit, I can’t help but think about what the recruiting system should look like.  Here are some observations:

1. Smash and his family seem completely overwhelmed by the recruiting process.  Until a young lady, a young lady that visibly annoys his mother, comes on the scene who saw her brother through the recruiting process, I felt sure that Smash was about to put himself into a terrible situation.
2. The recruiters are relentless.  From phone calls to drop-ins to texts to meeting his mom to following him in the parking to being at practice, they are ever present.
3. Everyone’s pushing for a verbal commitment, an idea that seems rather absurd since it doesn’t necessarily commit a recruit to a school.  They are not binding to either the school or the athlete.  An athlete must have a verbal commitment to sign a letter of intent.

Here’s how I fix the recruiting system.

I think Smash’s family is probably much like many other families that are entirely unprepared for the process they’re about to enter.  How could you be unless you’d been through the process before?  Coaches can certainly provide some excellent guidance, but that’s assuming that the coach has navigated the process before.

I’d advocate that college athletes actually do need agents, someone who knows the college process and can guide players serve as guides through the process. I think most people can cognitively get behind this idea.  The problem is how you fund it.  In my mind though, this goes back to the fundamental disconnect between college athletics and reality.  Players are recruited like the big money assets that they are, and they’re expected to navigate the system like the amateurs that everyone wants to act like they are.  Open up the system and allow the players to get agents need them and they can pay the agents through endorsements and their salary that they earn from their exploits on the field.

Recruiters are relentless.  This is a problem.  How can you justify a recruiter being able to gain access to a minor’s world in the way that recruiters are depicted as doing.  I think the proposal about agents would help to stem the tide.  If the player is contacted by a school, they can direct them to their agent, who can handle all negotiations until the athlete is ready to commit and serve as a bottleneck for all these contacts by recruiters.

Why does this verbal commitment exist?  Really?  I’ve said on the show that I think the system of how an athlete commits to a school should be overhauled anyway.  I’d like to see them get rid of verbal commits – either you’re in or you’re not.

The natural complaint about my proposal is “you’re turning these young men and children into adults and professionals”.  Can we just stop pretending that’s not what this is already.  That’s all I’m asking.