Three-point stance: Whining, early commits, trends in recruiting

Today's edition talks SEC whining, the pros and cons of very early commitments and the outrage over Miami's recent quarterback offers.

I’m not a big fan of whining. Having done this job for almost 18 years, whining ranks among my least favorite things as I hear it from fans, coaches, parents, prospects and everyone in-between when it comes to rankings or what I write. So when I see a super conference like the SEC whining about Jim Harbaugh’s spring practices at IMG Academy in Florida, I get annoyed.

Can everyone stop pretending they care whether the players get a spring break or not? College football has become a full-time job for athletes. Heck, it might have always been one. In the big money world of win now and win big, college football players are commodities off of which colleges and the NCAA make big bucks. In turn, the players strive for a chance at that coveted NFL paycheck while pushing hard to make themselves and their teams better. Spring break is for regular students, not for college football players.

The real issue here is that the SEC clearly doesn’t want Harbaugh, and in turn anyone who agrees with the idea outside of its conference, to have a better chance at poaching talent in the Southeast. But first off, if you don’t want to lose out to Michigan on recruits, then you just have to do a better job recruiting than they do. And secondly, IMG boasts players from California, Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida and other states and will continue to attract players from across the country. So why can’t Michigan practice there when there are a ton of prospects from areas it recruits? Why should the Florida schools and the SEC and ACC programs get the advantage of top players moving into their recruiting territory while Michigan sits and watches from Ann Arbor?

Everyone made a big deal out of the satellite camps that Harbaugh made famous last spring and I don’t think that had a huge impact on his recruiting class. I don’t think this is as big a deal as many make it out to be as well. Harbaugh calls the complaints “comical”, but I’ll just chalk it up to plain old whining. Just stop.

New Smyrna Beach, Fla. defensive back Jaleel McRae is a rare prospect for his age at 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds with cornerback skills. However, he’s a class of 2019 prospect, which means he’s played only one year of high school football. So his recent commitment to the Florida Gators got me thinking: is this commitment an advantage or disadvantage for Jim McElwain?

From the coach’s perspective, how do you say no to a commitment from a young player you feel is talented enough to warrant such an early offer? What are you going to say, no? And McRae has been a Gators fan his entire life, noting that he watched games with his dad since he was five-years-old. But what are the chances this sticks?

In this day and age of early commitments, or “reservations” as many are calling them, it’s almost a disadvantage to be that school a player picks this early. Sure, there are players like Derwin James who committed to a school early and never wavered, but McRae has three years of high school left and 35 months of recruiting until his National Signing Day. Thirty-five months! Okay, make that 33 months if he decides to enroll early, but you get the point. By then, there could be a new head coach at Florida, new head coaches at almost every SEC school and it’s doubtful any of the assistant coaches on the current staff will still be in Gainesville based on the amount of coaching moves we’re seeing these days.

I’m not trying to be Debbie Downer here about a nice 2019 commitment, but for some reason, I feel that commitments this early only end up making other options that much more attractive to a young player. Consider it a “been there, done that” theory. Time will tell.

Outraged at the 2020 offers this week to quarterbacks Harrison Bailey and Max Johnson by the Miami Hurricanes and head coach Mark Richt? Of course you are. Everyone seems to be outraged by offers to prospects who haven’t even played a down of high school football. But should you be outraged? That’s a different question.

The world was ticked off when David Sills was offered as a 7th grader and, I admit, I saw nothing on the film of his workouts that led me to believe such an offer from Lane Kiffin at USC was warranted. But watching Bailey, who is already 6-foot-3, and Johnson, who is already 6-foot-2 and the son of former NFL quarterback Brad Johnson, I see much more development that I saw back in the day with Sills.

But why offer so early? Because that’s the way this industry has been trending for the longest time and sometimes being first actually matters. As long as the NCAA is cool with colleges handing out verbal offers with zero accountability in regards to honoring them, why not?

Maybe one of these two kids, who will both likely end up with dozens of offers if they continue to develop, will feel that Richt was the brave one who first took a chance on them and become a Hurricane. And maybe that player will pan out and turn into a college star, leading the Hurricanes back to glory before heading off to a stellar NFL career. Or maybe they will be like Sills, an early commitment tossed aside by a new head coach because he never really developed the physical arm strength to be the quarterback Kiffin expected when he offered him in middle school.

I’ve written about how impressed I am with the way Sills handled everything from day one and how he’s re-invented himself at West Virginia as a wide receiver trying to get back to quarterback, but is his ability to handle the pressure rare? Will such early attention lead these two prospects to a predetermined fate of never living up to the hype like Chris Leak, who was offered in middle school when I first started covering recruiting? We’ll find out, but as long as the NCAA is cool with it, I am too.