Three years and out for college recruits
Senior year has lost its value in minds of many coaches
College football coaches have been reduced to Facebook and Twitter, trying to keep pace in a game that only moves faster and faster.
Football recruiting is systemically less shady than basketball prospecting. Broadly speaking, the process leans on high school coaches who use publicly available phone numbers and e-mail addresses. They've been vetted by school districts. They don't run showcases. They don't view their players as lottery tickets to be parlayed into future jobs.
The Sun will spotlight the upcoming local football season in each sports section leading up to opening night on Aug. 28. Coming Sunday: The second of two columns on the culture of college recruiting.
But that doesn't make it entirely rational.
There will be a slow drip of recruiting news across the next several months, but work on the class of 2010 is largely complete. According to Rivals.com, programs such as Oklahoma (21 verbal commitments so far), Alabama (20) and Texas (19) have already stocked up, part of a larger national trend.
"The pace of recruiting just continues to accelerate," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "I don't see that going backwards. So it's a challenge, a bit of risk-reward. You just hope your instincts are right."
In recent years, Naperville Central has seen defensive linemen Nick Mondek (Purdue) and Josh Jelesky (Vanderbilt) make verbal commitments weeks -- if not months -- before playing a single down of their senior seasons.
There wasn't always this rush to judgment, even for those who became All-American linebackers in college. Pat Fitzgerald -- the 34-year-old head coach at his alma mater Northwestern -- didn't receive his first offer (Georgia Tech) until his senior season at Sandburg was over.
"If you're an anomaly size-wise, if you got great film, if you're a quarterback -- you're gonna get heavily recruited as a junior," Fitzgerald said. "I hope the kid has means and a family (and) a coaching staff at their high school that can be a support network to help them.
"They're 16- or 17-year-old kids. So many (are) committing now early. (It's) a life-changing decision and a lot of these kids have no idea what's gonna happen tomorrow, let alone 17 years from now."
The idea of putting it all together during your senior year and blowing away the scouts isn't based in reality.
Central quarterback Nick Linne accounted for more than 2,300 yards and 21 touchdowns as a junior quarterback. This offseason he went to camps at places like Ball State, where there were hundreds of players and little time for one-on-one sessions with coaches. He recently decided to play baseball at Northwestern, though these past 12 months will have made him an exponentially better quarterback.
"Just knowing the offense for a second year makes everything so much easier," Linne said. "We (know) the holes, (where) stuff's gonna be open, when a certain play's gonna work."
Instead of tucking the ball and running with it, Linne said: "This year it's a lot more relaxing (to) be able to just (go) through your reads."
The volume of information available now is staggering, but closing the window after junior year isn't helping anyone make those guesses more educated.
"All football programs, because of technology, are able to recruit more on a national level," Purdue coach Danny Hope said. "You can buy a recruiting service for any state in the union (and) then push a button -- you get every videotape from that state."
The first-year coach outlined his recruiting vision: Never offer a scholarship to a player before his senior season, unless his junior film indicates that he can be a starter within his first two years at Purdue.
The Boilermaker staff doesn't want to be stuck with buyer's remorse and miss out on late-developing athletes. In this market, Hope will either find incredible value or go bankrupt.
Contact Patrick Mooney at pmooney@scn1.com or 630-416-5107.
