College Football traditions are great. Tailgating with friends, family, and sometimes even people one does not even know. College Football Tailgating is a great event for one and all. Then there's the pep rally, the band, cheerleaders, and for the true diehards, the luncheons with players and coaches the day before a big home game. But all of these traditions are positive in nature. Unfortunately, not all College Football traditions are equal in ethics and common sense. Say hello to recruiting in the 21st Century, The SEC Model:
Ray Melick of the Birmingham News wrote a column about over signing practices and how the NCAA should put a stop to it. Of course, since the state's most influential academic institution, the University of Alabama, happens to practice such tactics with its beloved Football Program to the tune of signing thirty-two players this past February. Melick was blasted by many 'Bama fans after the article was published. Alabama is one of many SEC Football Teams that uses this practice repeatedly, amongst other less scrupulous recruiting ploys.Note: per NCAA rules, a school is only allowed to sign 25 recruits to National Letters of Intent, with exceptions, including JUCO players and players that do not qualify not truly counting against the limit. In essence, a team that signs mediocre (or worse) academic recruits benefits long term, because those schools "showed the love" to the recruits when they were not eligible, and then re-sign those same recruits once they leave JUCO or Prep School. How convenient.
Ah, yes, nothing like finding every loop hole possible to win at any cost -- er, cheat to win at any cost – there, that's better.
But of course, as Melick stated in his article, if the NCAA placed a ban on over signing, the practice would be halted. Why over signing and other practices such as cutting players that do not perform well is permitted by the NCAA beckons the question of whether the NCAA is truly helping or hurting Division I College Athletes. Here's a breakdown of the two issues, which overlap, helping propel The SEC Model: 1. If a team wants to reload its roster or rebuild its program, over signing is the first step. What better way to gain a competitive advantage than to sign roughly one-third of a team's total allotted roster at the conclusion of one recruiting class?
2. To bolster point no. 1, if a player, or players, as is often the case, did not perform up to their football expectation level, cut them. This opens more scholarships for new recruits who are expected to perform at a higher level.
What do both of the aforementioned items have in common? The SEC uses them all the time. The problem is the NCAA. Per NCAA rules, a scholarship is year-to-year, not a four year guarantee. By making that single rule change, holding Division I Football Programs accountable for taking risks on recruits for whatever reason, teams would not only be held to a higher ethical standard. Such a rule would enforce the notion that academic morality comes before football immortality.
Schools hold mere 17-year olds accountable for their actions when they sign with a particular school, but what is good for the student athlete is apparently not the same for the schools. Melick explains:
Currently, Division I-A schools can sign as many players to National Letters of Intent (NLI) as they want, because the NLI is a one-sided contract that binds athletes to the school they sign with but is not a guarantee of receiving a scholarship. Athletes are guaranteed scholarships only when they sign scholarship papers. Schools often withhold those papers from the recruits they would want only if other recruits fail to qualify.
Well, technically Melick's commentary on the NCAA guideline means that if a school "likes a recruit," but does not like him more than another recruit, he does have to be placed on scholarship even though he signed his letter of intent. Is college not about teaching young men and women about ethics? Please dissect the proper ethical conduct in that equation? Someone please…
Now, the SEC has been used as the poster child on unethical recruiting behavior for decades. That's not going to change. There are, however, many schools outside of the SEC that use a similar model to what Saban uses at Alabama, and SEC schools use in general. In an effort to not discriminate, here are a few other schools that constantly take any talented recruit with an academic pulse in an effort to move upwards towards College Football's elite. Drum roll please, in no particular order:
- West Virginia: No, I do not hate Rich Rodriguez. WVU has consistently taken many recruits, especially from the state of Florida (hello Noel Devine), that lack character, and most often, solid academic standing, for decades. Rodriguez just kept the practice going.
- Michigan State: The Spartans are not going to land many recruits that OSU, MI, and ND want, teams that Spartans routinely compete against for top recruits. That's fact. With Michigan State being a land grant school, which allows individuals from various academic backgrounds an opportunity at a post-secondary education, the Spartans have taken advantage for years, well, decades really. While the concept is excellent in allowing many students the opportunity for at least obtaining a college degree, its intent was not to find majors for football players to be hidden so that they could stay eligible. Remember Boo-Boo Thompson from about ten years ago? Plaxico Burress was a porous student, hello East Lansing. Oddly, Saban is the former Michigan State head coach.
- Kansas State: The true magic behinds Bill Snyder's resurrection of the Wildcats Football Program was horrible out of conference scheduling and, you guessed it, taking any kid with a pulse, especially JUCO talent. To his credit, however, Snyder was a heck of a football coach, regardless of how he won. It's not easy attracting talent to the middle of nowhere.
- Washington State: I'll never forget that during the 1997 Rose Bowl it was mentioned that Washington State's starting tailback had once served time in prison. That's nice. I'm all for second chances, but combining that type of logic with utilizing the same recruiting scheme that Kansas State utilized under Snyder as it does under its current coaching staff, is a bit over the top.
- Miami: The school that probably hates Sports Illustrated more than any other notable Division I Football Program has, is, and will continue to live off of inner-city football recruits from in and around Dade County, Fla., a.k.a. the county where skill position athletes seemingly grow on palm trees. The irony: "The U." is an excellent academic institution. How do kids from horrendous high schools survive at a University such as Miami?
- Florida State: This is all you need to know, as the story was told to me by a well known sports reporter in the state of Florida less than ten years ago. Reinard Wilson, a former FSU defensive end and 1st Round Draft Pick of the Cincinnati Bengals, never took a test at Florida State. How did this person know this? Reinard told him the situation himself. Yikes. Maybe he was some sort of Learning disability student, hard to say. Regardless, even a learning disability student should have to take tests. FSU is another school that has taken more than its fair share of Dade County talent that quite honestly had little business at school of higher learning.
This list could go on forever, but more importantly, here are a few coaches that have the devil in their eye when it comes to academic and recruiting misgivings, in no particular order:
- Dennis Erickson: He coached at Miami during the time frame when its Football Program did just about everything wrong. Not to mention, he coached at Washington State before that, and now he's at Arizona State, a school that is far from being the opiate of academic Football Program choir boys.
- Nick Saban: Louisiana State can be added to his list of schools that he has been the head football coach. What do Michigan State, Louisiana State, and Alabama all have in common? They are Land Grant Institutions that continually have some of the lowest graduation rates for Football Players, as they frequently take advantage of their opportunities to admit porous football recruits from high schools, prep schools, and Junior Colleges.
- Jimmy Johnson: He's retired, but he still was the head coach at Oklahoma State when a certain Dexter Manly was in Stillwater, only to later admit that he couldn't read. Are you kidding me? He later took over the Miami program. Red light…
- Howard Schnellenberger: He's the former head coach that launched the University of Miami Football program into the spotlight. You figure out how it took place. He later took over Louisville and then Oklahoma, having much less success at both stops. He's now attempting to get Florida Atlantic off the ground. It's located near Dade County…no wonder the Owls had a good 2007 season.
- Phillip Fulmer: If you live in Tennessee and check the police records for Knoxville, it will not take long before you see another Volunteer on the wrong side of the law. He's taken many academic risks since he's been at Tennessee, and he's now paying for it. This just in: kids with poor academic backgrounds are often high risks for off the field incidents.
- Jackie Sherrill: He cheated at Pittsburgh; he cheated at Texas A&M; he cheated at Mississippi State. He did not care; he just wanted to win.
- John Cooper: If you ever want to feel sick to your stomach, look up tOSU Football Player's graduation rates when Cooper was in Columbus running the Buckeyes' Football Program. Ugly.
So what does 100 to 85 mean? That if Division I Schools use the aforementioned tactics, it receives roughly 100 chances to find great players compared to 85 for schools that do not. The SEC Model, it's spreading throughout College Football. What a joke.
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