Verbal Committments to Colleges

vhs....what year are they saying it might start?

Anyone actually believe the new rule is being proposed because the NCAA honchos are spending their Christmas season wondering how they can help those poor athletes who have to make early, uninformed decisions?

I think it will demonstrate the futility of trying to regulate markets. The regulations never accomplish what they hope, but they always lead to additional regulations.

My guess is that one of two things will happen:

1) It will make the recruiting cycle more frantic and chaotic by compressing the front end.

Under the current system, the market for elite players going to top schools clears first, and things work their way down from there. Most players really don't know what level to aspire to at first, but they adjust their aspirations according to the action they get and the commitments they hear about. With the new rule, they would have to react and adjust faster. In this respect, the purported goal of the regulation, which is to prevent uninformed decisions will NOT be achieved because players will have less information about a faster moving market. I also suspect this rule would cause a lot more deals to be offered with very short expiration dates at the beginning of the verbal period. Result: decisions made under more pressure with less relevant information.

OR

2) Schools and players will find a way to thwart the intent of the new rule by reaching some kind of alternate expression of intent that, along with a wink and a nod, complies while having almost the same effect as a verbal commitment. "A player of your level might see an offer of about 50% come July first if he clearly communicated his serious desire to play here." Sort of like what Victorian novels referred to as "an understanding" between a man and woman who couldn't announce an engagement.

OR BOTH.

The article was from June of this year, but did not give an implementation date. I see both sides of the issue.

To "verbally commit" is somehow seen as a status ranking - if I verbally commit early - I am better than those that don't.

But then I know guys that have verbally committed and are still out "working" the recruiting circuit, thus interfering with guys still looking for the right fit

Conversely, the verbal commitment can be seen as "desperate" as in - nothing else will come along or a relief as in - glad that is over.....

Swampboy,

I agree 100%. My first thought was your first point, but I think both points will happen.

In addition, I think it will have a bad consequence on states with large baseball populations like CA. It is common knowledge that many CA baseball players go east and south because there are not enough roster positions available in their homestate. These players will have less time (than previously) to find a roster position due to time and distance.

Also, some players who are academically focused on a specific major will not have time to find that perfect academic/athletic fit. Some will skip baseball to pursue their professional path.

I do think early commitments are getting out of hand. But I agree with Fenway, at least to the extent that July 1 between junior and senior years is too late.

What would you think about Jan. 1 of junior year?

Midlo,

Just some initial thoughts & reaction.....

Jan 1 junior year makes a little more sense (than proposed July 1 of rising senior year) because it coincides with the general regualar decision college application deadline as well. I like it alot better (relatively speaking) than the proposed July 1 deadline for rising seniors because it gives athletes more time to find the right program and fit. Even with the current process and time frame, there are many folks not finding the fit.

If a theoretical Jan 1 deadline would happen, I think you are going to see a lot more recruiting events and camps moved to the Fall and Winter. This will favor the warm weather schools in the south and west. For pitchers, this puts them in a tough spot as normally this is shut down time to rest their arms. Potentially, you could have pitchers throwing from junior winter year to senior winter year including high school winter warm-up programs, high school baseball, spring & summer travel baseball, fall camps or travel baseball, and winter camps. Pitching arms could get tired, sore and injured.

Also, D3 recruiting could be very different than it is today. Today, D3 coaches do some recruiting but have to wait to see who shows up for Fall tryouts in general. There will be more unknowns for them at that first Fall tryout/practice.

Thoughts?

One potential problem with January first is that coaches may not want a flurry of recruiting activity in the month and a half right before their season opens.

I still have questions about exactly what problem they're trying to solve and who this rule would help.

From the threads in this forum, it appears that about 10 Virginia 2011 high school grads committed before July 1st, several of them in the final days of June. In mid-July, the number of public verbals was 15. By late August, it had doubled to about 30. By November, it doubled again to a little more than 60.

So on the surface, it initially affects maybe ten players in the state each year.

Whether it helps them is another question. We need to step back and realize that early commits are a problem only if they are forcing imprudent or coerced decisions. If we saw those ten elite players committing early to unsuiable mediocre programs or having widespread buyers remorse, there might be a problem worth addressing. However, I don't see these things happening. The elite players who get the early offers appear to be making good decisions based on sound understanding of their value and their options. I don't see how the rule will help these players, but I can see how it would force them into more hasty decisions later. Under the present system, they can make a leisurely decision in the fall of their junior year. Under the new rule, they will receive a flurry of time sensitive offers on July 1st. How does this help them?

For the huge majority of players below the elite level, it is more likely to hurt them. At present, they get a flow of information about who has recruited whom and can discern when they need to accept that their dream school probably isn't going to call. The new rule would delay their receipt of market signals telling them when they need to start doing homework on other possibilities. These players will also make more hasty decisions later.

So who exactly would this rule benefit and how?

Fenway,

I think you've gone back and forth there with events that happen in the Junior and Senior years ...?

Basically what I'm saying is this. I don't see a need to change the NLI schedule. And I agree with Fenway that the pending NCAA proposal sets the date too late. But I also do think that the VERY early commitments are just a case of a recruiting arms race, so to speak, that is only now starting to grow and will, if left unchecked, likely grow out of control.

I'd like to see kids have to get through that summer between sophomore and junior years, and then spend that fall looking at options. They can be narrowing down their preferences and getting a feel for which schools are going to be interested in them. But if actual offers were to wait until Jan. 1, then the situations we're seeking where kids are getting offers with short deadlines to respond would go away, at least for a few more months. And more important than addressing things the way they are, would be to stop the whole time table from continuing to move earlier and earlier.

The truth is, I don't think the players or the schools really want to feed the continued acceleration of the process. It's just that the schools fear that someone will beat them to the punch, so they keep moving earlier and earlier. If you eliminate that problem, then you could strike the right balance between leaving kids enough time (addressing Fenway's concerns) on the one hand, and stopping this trend towards earlier and earlier commitments as well.

The reality is that if we let verbals continue the trend towards more and more, earlier and earlier commitments, then sure as shootin' you're going to see another trend -- more and more verbal deals being reneged on by one side or the other. You'll have cutthroat situations like the one that came up in another thread, where schools revoke deals just because they fall out of love with the kid or his performance; you'll have kids deciding, on second thought, that they prefer a different school; you'll have schools changing coaches (the larger the time window, the more often this will be a factor) and the new staffs re-evaluating prior commitments, etc.

As it is, more and more baseball players are having to figure out their college druthers a year sooner than their classmates. Well, I guess you have to give something to get something. But a year is enough. I don't see why we have to sit back and let it get to where kids are committing 2 years ahead of when their classmates have to decide. There is a maturity factor at work in those 2 years, and to demand that kids make life-affecting decisions that early is really asking too much.

I agree with Midlo Dad.

I have "heard" of freshman and sophomores "verbally committing" to a college and ALOT can change (for both the student and the college) in 3 years.

Until a player is a Junior and closer to the "peak" of their performance as compared to college players, how does either side really know if it is a good fit athletically? It is a gamble that could cause more harm than good.

Our son could have verbally committed to 2 different schools. We told them we were not ready to commit to any school at this point, but when it comes to really committing (NLI) they were schools he was interested in having further discussions.

Considering the verbal commitment does not constitute a real offer, we are inclined to weigh real offers in lieu of “maybes” and potentially ward off other interested schools.

quote:

Originally posted by vhs_02_2012:

...Until a player is a Junior and closer to the "peak" of their performance as compared to college players, how does either side really know if it is a good fit athletically? ...

The majority of early commits are pitchers. If a sophomore in HS is throwing 88-90, it is pretty safe to say he can contribute to a college team.

With that being said, I am not a big fan of early commits (soph. year). Most kids do not know what they want for dinner at age 16, much less where they want to go to school. Just my opinion...

quote:

Originally posted by vhs_02_2012:


Our son could have verbally committed to 2 different schools. We told them we were not ready to commit to any school at this point, but when it comes to really committing (NLI) they were schools he was interested in having further discussions.

Considering the verbal commitment does not constitute a real offer, we are inclined to weigh real offers in lieu of “maybes” and potentially ward off other interested schools.

Not sure what you mean by a "real offer."

Verbal commitments are usually based on written but unenforceable offer sheets. That's as real as it gets until the early signing period.

Unless a player is first round material, I doubt many schools would go to all the trouble of clearing the NLI and the conference grant-in-aid forms through their compliance office unless he's already told them he will accept the offer. All the negotiation has to be concluded before the signing period so they can get all the paperwork prepared and reviewed and shipped. Granted, the closer you get to the signing period, the less likely either party is to have a change of heart or change of circumstances. But the player still has to give a verbal commitment at least a little bit before the signing period. When exactly are you planning to commit?

I am not a big fan of it either. The players that are offered that early are the same players that will be in a position to garner many offers down the road. The schools are the real winners here not the players. The players stop looking but the schools dont. The more this stuff has spread and become more frequent the more I dont like it.

For us personally, it would not be until after his Junior year of HS and unless it was an exceptional offer, not at the early period in November either.

I also agree with Coach May....the schools keep looking and the players stop.....when they school can change their mind and we are left with an "unenforceable offer sheet"....that is an un-equal balance of power that I would not subject my son to....

I agree that the relationship is fundamentally unequal, and the NCAA exists in large part to preserve the inequality.

I also agree that withholding your commitment is the only power you have, but it takes nerves of steel to stick with your strategy when friends are committing and offers start getting pulled off the table. I hope to be saluting your courage and success a year from next spring!

I just don't think this proposed rule will help any athletes.