Has anyone ever had an offer pulled? Were you told why? And how soon before HS graduation was it pulled?
Note: Just being curious on how this works. It's not applicable to me.
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Yes. My son's first offer was a 25% athletic scholarship to a $60K (at the time) private school with NO DEADLINE for a decision. This was my son's first dream school. I later learned this 25% offer is what is called a "placeholder offer", and the offer sat for about a month as my son thought things over and we tried to get answers from Admissions and Financial Aid. We were told he also qualified for additional academic money with an ED application, but not told specifically the exact amount of the academic scholarship...they only provided a $$ range. Of course this idea of not providing financial details at a $60K school went over like a fart at church for my wife and I.
A month later, son went to an academic showcase where this same 25% offering school was in attendence as well as many other high academic schools. He was contacted by a handful of other schools and wanted to attend a prospect camp for two of them the following weekend. We were very excited about the prospect of him going to any of these schools. My son's travel coach leaked the prospect camp information to the first (25%) offering school (his oldest son played there) in hopes of pressuring them for more money for my son, and to get my son to commit. Instead the first school rescinded the first 25% offer and re-offered a 50% athletic scholarship with a 5-day deadline on their second offer. At the weekend prospect camp, my son was offered (school checked all the boxes...top engineering school) and he committed on the following Tuesday same day as the 2nd offer 50% deadline school. My son called the previous 50% offer Head Coach to tell him about his final decision. Before he could say a word, the Head Coach told him they were pulling the 50% offer as they had a verbal commitment from a recruit in CT. My son said "ok", thanked him for his interest and said "goodbye". We later found out through the travel coach that the first offering Head Coach knew my son had two Ivy League offers, so he pulled the trigger on another recruit that he knew he could get.
Looking back, it was a very strange recruiting experience as we were dealing with some assistant coaches who didn't seem to know what they were doing and what they were saying. We were newbies at this, and we seemed to know more about the process.
Just my son's experience. This all happened prior to his high school senior year.
Thx fenway.
I just went down a google worm hole and can't find the details. I remember a player in the northern part of our state got into a bit of trouble and "all of a sudden" was going to a different college. I am am pretty sure alcohol was involved and his offer was pulled. But he was a very good player so he was picked up quickly. The sad part, this same player was in a single car crash over Christmas break and died several days later.
Another player committed to a pretty good out of state baseball college. "All of a sudden" he is committed to a state mid-major school. Then he transferred after his freshman year to an ACC instate school. Sat out sophomore year. Stayed on the roster the next three years.
I am not sure you will ever hear the exact details of these kind of stories. Just 1) keep clean, and 2) commit to a school where you can play and make a difference; 3) KEEP YOUR GRADES UP!
Here is a similar topic link:
It is not uncommon for an offer to be pulled. It happens a lot when a player commits in his Freshman year and doesn't develop like they were projected. The ones that I know of were with Power 5 schools.
Another experience was where my 2015 was offered from a D1 school with a deadline to answer in 2 days. When 2015 called the evening of the 2nd day to accept he was told they reconsidered and the offer was pulled. Turns out they had offered another player who initially rejected their offer only to reconsider and accept the day before my 2015 called to accept his offer.
@fenwaysouth posted:Yes. My son's first offer was a 25% athletic scholarship to a $60K (at the time) private school with NO DEADLINE for a decision. This was my son's first dream school. I later learned this 25% offer is what is called a "placeholder offer", and the offer sat for about a month as my son thought things over and we tried to get answers from Admissions and Financial Aid. We were told he also qualified for additional academic money with an ED application, but not told specifically the exact amount of the academic scholarship...they only provided a $$ range. Of course this idea of not providing financial details at a $60K school went over like a fart at church for my wife and I.
A month later, son went to an academic showcase where this same 25% offering school was in attendence as well as many other high academic schools. He was contacted by a handful of other schools and wanted to attend a prospect camp for two of them the following weekend. We were very excited about the prospect of him going to any of these schools. My son's travel coach leaked the prospect camp information to the first (25%) offering school (his oldest son played there) in hopes of pressuring them for more money for my son, and to get my son to commit. Instead the first school rescinded the first 25% offer and re-offered a 50% athletic scholarship with a 5-day deadline on their second offer. At the weekend prospect camp, my son was offered (school checked all the boxes...top engineering school) and he committed on the following Tuesday same day as the 2nd offer 50% deadline school. My son called the previous 50% offer Head Coach to tell him about his final decision. Before he could say a word, the Head Coach told him they were pulling the 50% offer as they had a verbal commitment from a recruit in CT. My son said "ok", thanked him for his interest and said "goodbye". We later found out through the travel coach that the first offering Head Coach knew my son had two Ivy League offers, so he pulled the trigger on another recruit that he knew he could get.
Looking back, it was a very strange recruiting experience as we were dealing with some assistant coaches who didn't seem to know what they were doing and what they were saying. We were newbies at this, and we seemed to know more about the process.
Just my son's experience. This all happened prior to his high school senior year.
Sorry my retirement plan is forcing me to ask, did your kid also end up getting any academic $?
Committing early and playing higher level baseball gets knocked a lot on this board a lot. In a class of 15 maybe one or two kids won't end up making it on campus. And those are at schools where the draft has an impact on available money.
I would say it's pretty rare and in most cases where you see a kid commit, they almost always end up on campus in August. That stud freshman you see committing, is a stud senior 95% of the time. Sure we all know a kid or two who didn't end up where he was supposed to, but think of how many baseball players you know who did. It's not common and when it does happen it tends to be centered around an injury, grades, or the big one - a coaching change.
I've seen more kids not get into their HA D3 than I have get their offer pulled from a D1.
What happens once on campus is a completely different story.
@2022NYC posted:Sorry my retirement plan is forcing me to ask, did your kid also end up getting any academic $?
2022NYC - Totally understand. Knowledge may be good (Faber College motto), but higher education ain't cheap! 
He received some money in the form of a merit scholarship...$4K a year from his 2nd dream school (an Ivy). Ivy FA is based on need based financial aid. Honestly, I think dream school #2 threw in the $4K merit to exactly match another competitive Ivy offer (3rd dream school). Both Ivy need based packages were almost identical to the 50% athletic scholarship offered previously by the 1st dream school. It never hurts to have numbers in your back pocket when talking to coaches and FA offices about offers and potential offers. Whether or not you share those numbers is another matter entirely.
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This may not answer the initial question, but here it is.
Son rec’d an offer immediately after the close of a tourney.
Drove to the Campus for a tour and the amount was slipped across the table by the HC. He said circle back in a couple of days with a decision.
It was the kids Super Dream School and no other $$ offers would have made a difference.
He called this P5 school back after lunch and accepted the offer. DONE.
Later, he found out that there were 4 others in play with offers that were pulled.
Bird in the hand comes to mind. More so during Covid.
@PABaseball posted:Committing early and playing higher level baseball gets knocked a lot on this board a lot. In a class of 15 maybe one or two kids won't end up making it on campus. And those are at schools where the draft has an impact on available money.
I would say it's pretty rare and in most cases where you see a kid commit, they almost always end up on campus in August. That stud freshman you see committing, is a stud senior 95% of the time. Sure we all know a kid or two who didn't end up where he was supposed to, but think of how many baseball players you know who did. It's not common and when it does happen it tends to be centered around an injury, grades, or the big one - a coaching change.
I've seen more kids not get into their HA D3 than I have get their offer pulled from a D1.
What happens once on campus is a completely different story.
This has been my observation as well. Of my son's travel ball program, roughly 10-12 kids committed to various levels of college ball each grad year, so ~30-40 kids I observed closely as my son went through HS (son's grad year and a couple years ahead of him). 5 or 6 were drafted and signed. I recall 2 kids who's offers were outright pulled prior to NLI by SEC schools. One was the victim of a new coach who reneged on the prior coach's verbal offer, and the other was the case of a stud who was offered as a HS freshman but didn't gain any velocity through his HS career. Two or three never showed up at their committed school but I never heard why. Probably a half dozen were cut in the fall of their freshman year (mostly late offers with little or no $), and maybe another half dozen or so were cut after their freshman year. Fewer than 50% made it from verbal commitment to college sophomore...
@Smitty28 posted:This has been my observation as well. Of my son's travel ball program, roughly 10-12 kids committed to various levels of college ball each grad year, so ~30-40 kids I observed closely as my son went through HS (son's grad year and a couple years ahead of him). 5 or 6 were drafted and signed. I recall 2 kids who's offers were outright pulled prior to NLI by SEC schools. One was the victim of a new coach who reneged on the prior coach's verbal offer, and the other was the case of a stud who was offered as a HS freshman but didn't gain any velocity through his HS career. Two or three never showed up at their committed school but I never heard why. Probably a half dozen were cut in the fall of their freshman year (mostly late offers with little or no $), and maybe another half dozen or so were cut after their freshman year. Fewer than 50% made it from verbal commitment to college sophomore...
Although this is Smitty's report of his one-off experience, I'd agree with it. My anecdotal sense is that Smitty's post is pretty accurate as to how this often plays out for a random group of high level players.
@Francis7 posted:Would most others say this is the norm?
I would
To Smitty’s point, which I agree with, all you have to do is look at rosters from year to year. I’m pretty familiar with the program at Texas A&M, so let’s use them as an example. In 2019 they recruited 12 freshmen. Only a handful got on the field at all in 2019 & 2020 - and only a couple played much. The 2021 roster only shows 5 of the 12 still on the team. So Smitty’s math is right on point in this case. The more competitive the program the more it will hold true.
Rosters are typically close to (give or take a player). When I noticed it at one school I found it to be true at the next ten randomly selected programs.
14 freshmen
7 sophs
7 juniors
7 seniors
Yes. Concur with adbono for D1 P5 that it is around 50% or less. Also, I know a fair number of very talented P5 guys that got the "talk" after Fall practices sophomore year. They were done at that P5 school. Many of these same people would have been 4-year starters on a D1 mid-major team, and would have received more scholarship money.
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I"m gonna say less than 50% at P5 schools. The number is again cut during/after sophomore year lately because of JUCO transfers and then cut in half again after junior year because of draft. There are usually only about 2/3 seniors on the roster who were at a P5 school all 4 years. Covid affected that a little this year but when I was doing the research for my son at P5's it was almost exclusively correct in SEC, almost the same in ACC, maybe 3/4 at the other P5's. Understand a P5 does not recruit players for 4 years. They expect if they recruited you that you will get drafted after 3 or not be there by then.