If the proposal passes, college football recruiting will change drastically.
The NCAA Division I Council introduced a proposal Wednesday for two early signing periods in college football.
If it passes a vote in April, this will significantly change the world of college football recruiting, as players would be able to sign binding National Letters of Intent during 72-hour periods in late June and ,id-December, in addition to the traditional National Signing Day on the first Wednesday in February.
“The working group did a deep dive on recruiting from beginning to end, and I think what we came up with as a proposal is both student-athlete-friendly and coach- and staff-friendly,” said Bob Bowlsby, chair of the Football Oversight Committee and commissioner of the Big 12 Conference. “We hit a sweet spot.”
Before diving in to the potential ramifications of this proposal, there’s an important aspect not explicitly addressed in the NCAA’s press release: the recruiting calendar.
Currently, prospects are not allowed to take official visits (paid for by the school) until the fall of their senior years. It’s vital that prospects be allowed to take those official visits before signing with a school. The most obvious reason is that a prospect and his family need to be able to see and experience the school before making such an important decision.
Luckily, it does appear that the NCAA anticipated this needed change and will be proactive in making it, should the proposal pass, as ESPN’s Jeremy Crabtree reported.
The NCAA said Thursday it would be willing to adjust the recruiting calendar to allow prospects to take official visits during the summer before their senior years in conjunction with a proposal to add early signing periods on the last Wednesday of June and in mid-December. Michelle Hosick, the NCAA's associate director of media and public relations, said if the adjustments to the recruiting calendar passes in an April vote, recruits would be allowed to take official visits starting June 1 until the last Saturday before the June signing period begins. They would also be allowed to take visits from July 25-31. The Collegiate Commissioners Association, who controls the national letter of intent and when recruits can officially sign with a school, is expected to vote in favor of the two early signing periods in a November vote. The NCAA controls the recruiting calendar and official visit schedules and that vote would not take place until April.
Impact on players
The new system would be most beneficial to those players who have a number of early offers, have made trips to check them out, and are absolutely certain about the schools they wish to attend. The system would eliminate the hundreds of annoying calls and texts committed players get from other schools, as once a prospect has signed, he is locked in. Knowing a spot is locked up also could give the recruit the confidence he needs to go out and play his senior season without fear of getting hurt and potentially losing his spot on a roster.
The new system would give a prospect greater clarity as to the interest from schools. Some schools throw out hundreds of verbal offers despite having only 20-something spots in the class. Those verbal offers are worth next to nothing.
Under the new system, a school would have to be careful about throwing out so many offers. If a prospect has a verbal offer, he’ll know in June how serious a school is about him by whether the school sends him a letter of intent to sign. If not, he’ll know the school is not ready to be serious about him. That is a good thing. It will be a reality check for some players and help them to focus on their real options.
But there are downsides, too. Schools would no doubt use high-pressure tactics to get players to sign early, and that could really hurt prospects who are potential late bloomers, or who are secondary options for elite programs.
Let’s use an example.
Johnny Prospect is a defensive end from Indiana. He is 6’4 and 205 pounds, and has a nice junior season. A few mid-level Big Ten schools have offered him. He is on Ohio State’s radar, but the Buckeyes are not willing to let him sign early because they first want to chase elite prospects.
In an early signing period, Prospect might believe a mid-level Big Ten is the best he can do, and that school is saying that if he does not sign, it will give his spot away. So he signs.
He gets his recruitment off his mind and knows that the school will honor his scholarship even if he gets hurt as a senior. At that point he’s gained five pounds and is now 210: decent progress.
But then he blows up and come December, he’s had 20 sacks and put on 10 pounds and is now 6’4 and 220 pounds.
Meanwhile, Ohio State has missed on two of its top three targets at the position, and is now absolutely willing to take Prospect. But there’s a problem: Ohio State cannot try to get in on his recruitment, because he has already signed with an inferior program. So now Johnny Prospect cannot sign with what turned out to be his best option.
Mid-level schools have every incentive to pressure potential sleepers to sign early, knowing that if the recruit does pass on signing early and blows up, there is a good chance they will lose him to a better program.
There’s also the potential downside of players who blossom as seniors not having as many options as usual, as schools have already filled up during earlier signing periods.
The issue of potential coaching changes will be addressed in the final section.
Impact on schools
One of the big winners could be Northern schools, who could now have Southern recruits visit during the months when ice is not on the ground.
Programs with good evaluators would benefit under the new system because they will discover talent first and potentially sign them before their competitors have a chance to offer. The early signing period would almost certainly result in slightly more parity across the sport.
Certainty would come for schools, too. No longer would a prospect’s verbal commitment matter as much. If a player is committed verbally, he would be expected by the school to sign early. If he does not, the school would know he’s not truly committed.
After each signing period, staffs would look at what they and other schools have inked, and then refocus their efforts on other players. No longer having to keep recruiting players who have signed would be a major relief for college coaches.
There are downsides for schools, too.
Schools who rely on flipping recruits from other schools and closing strong on National Signing Day would be hurt by this. They’d be forced to sign players with a high amount of projection baked in to the evaluation or risk losing those players to schools willing to sign them early. Inevitably, some of those high-upside players turn out great, but some simply won’t. Being unable to wait and evaluate some of these players during their senior years creates a less efficient process.
And one of the biggest issues an early period would create is recruits signing, or being unable to sign, before they get their fall semester grades. For some recruits, those grades could make or break whether they'd academically qualify at the school they just signed with.
This could be tough at schools with challenging academic requirements, like Stanford, Vanderbilt, or Northwestern. It could also be hard for schools that tend to recruit players with basic academic hurdles.
An important unknown
The elephant in the room is just how binding the early signings would be under the new system.
Under the current system, the overwhelming majority of coaching hires and fires have been made before the traditional National Signing Day.
But it’s easy to anticipate prospects wanting out of their signings made in June or December if a head coach or coordinator were to leave. Would there be contingencies made for that? Or, will the NCAA simply tell recruits that if they sign in June, they acknowledge that they are committing to a school and not a coach?