Pac-12 Media Day: How young is too young in recruiting wars?
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - There are more than 450 high school prospects who were freshmen last season who claim to have offers. There are nearly 50 recruits who have offers who just finished their eighth-grade year.
And Stanford coach David Shaw thinks it’s bad for business.
“It is not good for college football,” Shaw said Wednesday at Pac-12 Media Day. “There is a reason why in women’s softball they started curtailing recruiting because they had sixth-graders getting offered. That’s not healthy for anybody.
“What sixth-grader knows what they want to major in in college? They don’t even know what college is, they haven’t even gotten to high school yet. That’s unhealthy. Offering eighth-graders or ninth-graders is not healthy for anybody.”
That is a perfectly valid opinion – but not one shared by every coach in the conference, let alone nationally where offers are flooding in left and right to hundreds of prospects around the country. For Shaw, though, who also has serious academic hurdles for his prospects to clear even before he can get serious about offering, it’s a dangerous path to pursue.
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“Forget about our circumstances where we want to know where they are academically before we offer them a scholarship anyway, we need to allow high school kids to be in high school,” Shaw said. “They need to focus on being the best students and athletes they can be. The recruiting machine in college football right now is very misleading and it’s the reason why we have so many guys transfer. They don’t know who they are and they’re picking colleges for the wrong reasons.
"They get to college and they have their first bump in the road, they’re third string as a freshman and they say, ‘I shouldn’t be third string, I’m going someplace else,’ instead of saying ‘I chose this college because it’s where I want to go to school and play football. If I’m not starting that’s on me to work my way up the ladder as I’m going to the school I wanted to go to.' ”
UCLA coach Chip Kelly sides with Shaw and the approach to early recruiting, but Kelly does not necessarily take a stance on whether it’s good or bad for the game that so many early offers are going out.
The Bruins’ approach to recruiting is different than Stanford’s, is different than Oregon’s, is different than Alabama’s. Some approaches work better than others, but the feeling is that throwing out offers to middle-schoolers should be a road less traveled.
“I don't know what's healthy, not healthy,” Kelly said. “When I was a freshman I was worried about what I was wearing to school the next day, let alone was I offered a scholarship by a school that really didn't mean I was offered? Ten years ago, you got a letter of interest from a school. The new norm now is to just offer them a scholarship. Somebody says he can play, we'll throw an offer.”
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One Pac-12 coach who can sympathize with Shaw’s approach but offers a different stance is Oregon’s Mario Cristobal, who just so happened to sign the seventh-best class in the country last recruiting cycle. It was the best class in the Pac-12 by a wide margin. A very wide margin.
Cristobal has earned a reputation as an aggressive, passionate recruiter – just like his entire staff – and it’s paid off as the Ducks went into Southern California last cycle and landed a bunch of elite recruits, including the top-rated player in the state, five-star Kayvon Thibodeaux.
If offering players earlier helps Oregon’s program, Cristobal does not plan to relent.
“We’re aggressive, and we’re not going to stop being aggressive,” Cristobal said. “If we feel strongly about somebody and we feel they could help us win championships and they’re good people we’re going to go, we’re going to make a move. We don’t shy away from that. People have their philosophies and more power to them. God bless them, that’s just our philosophy.
“I trust our eyes. When we see it and the background check matches up because you have to save yourself from yourself sometimes – great film, great player, not doing the right things, we should probably hold back – but if it matches up, what are we going to wait for? For the next team to offer him?”
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