Mike Farrell has a suggestion for all those coaches complaining about recruits
exercising the small bit of freedom and leverage they have with a school before signing a NLI de-committing:
“Move the written offer date up to Sept. 1 of freshman year and I guarantee there will be a lot less kids with offers, and committing, and de-commiting,” he said. “Kids are smarter than they are given credit for, and when the offers used to be in writing before their junior year, they would wait for Sept. 1. If they didn’t get a written offer, they would be asking why not.
“Kids could press the schools and the schools could only dodge the question for a limited amount of time. I am not blaming the kids or the schools now because they are all playing by the rules but that is the problem — the process is broken and it needs to start holding someone accountable.
“Kids are kids, so the NCAA needs to make the schools accountable,” Farrell said. “If programs knew they would have to put an offer in writing when a kid was a freshman, they would be more careful on who they were recruiting and it would slow the process back down to a more controlled situation.”
That’s not such a bad idea. It’s not as good as Andy Staples’ suggestion, but at least it’s a start. Which means it’s got no chance of ever seeing the light of day as a concrete rule.