Almost every high school and club sport is seeing athletes being offered—and committing to colleges—at younger and younger ages.  It’s not unusual to see 14-year-olds making verbals today, which carries risks for both athlete and university.  Here, in the second of a two-part series, we take a more in-depth look at the issue…

By Brentt Eads

Click here for The Early Recruiting Dilemma (Part 1)

 

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Keeping Your Options Open

One of the top freshmen football players in the nation is Dylan Moses, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound linebacker at University Lab High in Baton Rouge, La.

Described by scouts as “an absolute man-child,” the defender committed to LSU in September and has already been featured on the cover of ESPN Magazine.

His father, Edward Moses Jr., was very involved in the process and was active in talking to the Tigers’ coaches.

“Dylan and I had an in-depth conversation with the LSU coaches about the reasons for his early offer and how they intended to use him in the future.  After hearing their responses, Dylan decided that it was time to commit.  We’re not worried about a coaching change at LSU unless the incoming coach wouldn’t value Dylan as much as Coach (Les) Miles does.”

Still, the Moses family is keeping options open for Dylan, just in case anything could change.

“We have been to Texas, Texas A&M, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss and Georgia,” says the freshman’s father, “and if God spares our lives we intend on visiting USC, UCLA, Nebraska, Florida, Florida State, Clemson, South Carolina, Notre Dame and Miami.

“Dylan has been thrown into the fray at a very early age and I want him to enjoy the recruiting process so at the end when he signs his LOI he will be completely comfortable with his school.”

 

Going on Cruise Control?

Another concern around early recruiting is whether the committed athlete will continue to push hard and not become complacent.

“We’re definitely seeing that at varying levels now,” said Gary Haning, founder of the OC Batbusters and one of the most successful club coaches in softball history.

“Some players, not a lot but a few, know where they’re going to college so they just cruise and think that when they show up on campus it will kick in.”

“There’s certainly the risk that a player could not work as hard as he should,” says baseball scout Corey Rodriguez.  “It’s hard enough to evaluate a senior and you have a history of success to track with him.

“You’ll have to really do your homework and make sure not only that he’s got the talent and the ceiling to improve, but also the desire and motivation to keep working hard.”

Rodriguez explains that a program that does a good job of scouting and eventually signing young players who have the fire to improve is UCLA, which, not surprisingly, won a national championship this year.

“Not every school can do it,” he concludes. “It makes the risk that much greater for the college than the athlete because of the limited scholarships. The college has to be good at identifying those players who have the passion to be the best.”

In basketball, Van Coleman, the Publisher of Hot 100 Hoops and the Vice President of Content for the Basketball Channel, says complacency has been a major deterrent.

“College coaches have backed off because they’ve seen several high-profile failures and are smart enough to know that if a kid commits he often loses the motivation to play in the McDonald’s Game or other major events where elite talent goes,” Coleman says. “There’s a lot of development between the freshman and sophomore years and if a player doesn’t work hard, he can be passed up very quickly.”

On the flip side, Edward Moses, Jr. believes that committing early has been a positive motivating factor for his son.

“The end goal for Dylan is not to just receive a scholarship offer and commit to a school, it is for him to graduate from University Lab with honors, earn a No. 1 national football ranking and maintain that status until he graduates, start as a (college) freshman and play at the highest level possible, graduate and finally, if the Lord feels the same, play in the League (NFL).”

 

Where is Early Recruiting headed?

Some joke that eventually coaches and scouts will look at fetal ultrasounds as recruiting tools.

While that’s a bit extreme, the worry is young athletes in some sports are being pressured into making huge decisions that, at ages 15, 14 and even 13, is a lot to deal with.

That’s not to say early recruiting is inherently bad; many feel it can be a blessing to end the exhausting recruiting process while knowing where an athlete will be getting an education.

Explains Bill Shipman: “You have to look at each case individually and for Ally, having been through it not just with her sister, but seeing her brother, Billy, go through the recruiting process in football (he’s a freshman lineman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo), we saw her handling it as well, if not better, than girls two years older than her.

“I do get nervous when a player goes to one school and commits as a freshman,” the coach continues.  “I do believe recruits need to see more and for each individual there needs to be a different process, but overall the opportunity to get a paid education is worth the risk.”

“One major advantage we saw about committing so early was we saw that Dylan now has a solid goal staring him in the face,” Edward Moses Jr. adds. “Of course, the goal has stipulations: graduate from high school with acceptable grades and continue to develop on the football field.”

Mark Griggs, the Head Coach of the Wichita Mustangs softball club, wrote in an article on StudentSportsSoftball.com that “I have spoken to many college coaches about the subject, and they all seem to say the same thing: ‘We don’t like it at all, we wish it would change, but if everyone is doing it, then we have to do it to stay competitive.’”

Like taxes, parents and coaches complain a lot about the problem but few offer solutions.

Griggs proposed age classifications, the elimination of unofficial visits where the college interacts with the recruit and official visits starting in a player’s junior year.

Others, such as Troy Ybarra, who is the head softball coach at powerhouse Mission Viejo High (Calif.) says, “I think the process should start after a player’s freshman year at the minimum.”

Many feel sports like softball will end up being like football and baseball where a player will commit but will continue shopping.

“What you’re going to see in softball,” believes Gerry Quinn, “is where a verbal is soft and coaches will poach players.  That’s one thing you’ll see, more players reneging on their verbals.

“In non-revenue sports, there’s been a bit of a code that you stop recruiting when a player commits, but I think it will end up like basketball and football where coaches will just try harder.”

While it’s doubtful governing bodies, be it at the high school level or the NCAA, will make any impactful legislative moves in the near future, what could happen is what has naturally occurred in boys basketball.

To show a comparison, in softball there are over 150 sophomores committed; in boys basketball there are only four.

“Coaches simply began to regulate themselves because they saw that if they made too many mistakes on young players they’d be fired,” says Van Coleman.

“The movement has been to not take them too early. In basketball, experience has shown that offering too early leads to the potential of failures, with a lot of time and effort put in going to waste.  Coaches have realized there’s a lot of risk in taking kids too early because they don’t get any better.

“Generally, experience shows that the longer you wait to make a decision during your high school career, the more accurate that decision will be. Basketball coaches now will offer a kid but will not push a player to commit.  They’ll say, ‘If you continue to improve, we’ll have the offer on the table and you decide when you’re ready.

“Maybe other sports will do that in time.”