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This was in our paper on Sunday

Thoughts?

NCAA mulls abolishing early offers

Texas coach Mack Brown, who revolutionized football recruiting in the southwest when he was hired 13 years ago and began extending scholarship offers earlier than other schools, doesn't believe this particular proposal is directed at the Longhorns.

But that doesn't mean he favors it.

"I think recruiting is OK as long as the parents and the high school coach are in control," Brown said. "If a guy wants to commit as a sophomore and somebody offers him, it's like a young man leaving college to go to the NFL or to play in the NBA. Who are we to say that's not best?"

This would hurt high mid major basketball programs like crazy.

A lot of UNI's best players in the last 5-8 years have been guys that coaching staff has identified as talent long before the BCS coaches had and got offers to them. It's been funny some years to watch the progression. A kid from Iowa that just committed to play basketball at Wisconsin got his first two offers from Albany and UNI just over a year ago. All of a sudden within the last 6 months he got offers from 10-12 BCS school. He wanted to commit to UNI early but his AAU coach told him to wait and hold out for bigger schools to offer.

UNI has a kid "signed" in the class of 2011 named Seth Tuttle. He's the #3 player in the state (the #2 player in the state was the kid who had the offer from us, but then picked up some big offers), and has been blowing up on the AAU circuit this summer. He committed about two months ago. His coach got mad at him for committing, and now rumors are flying the BCS schools are trying to get him to decommit so that they can recruit him.

The same pattern can be found in football recruits in the state of Iowa. Typically their offer sheet looks like this, typically in this order

UNI/Northwest Missiouri State/SDSU
about 6 months later
Iowa State/Kansas/Wyoming (offers a ton of Iowa kids)/Northern Illinois
A month or two after that
Iowa
a month or so after that
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois


A lot of times schools like UNI, NWMOST, SDSU, USD, etc... are used as early talent detectors, and if they don't commit early they get stolen by the big schools because they play the "we are big time" card

Taking away the early commitment period would hurt smaller schools, and only help the BCS schools. Although that is all the NCAA cares about anyway.

Does this just apply to boys hoops? Or does it affect that cr@zy 8th grader that signed with $C?

The article is basically referencing football but, I would imagine, if it passes, it would encompass all sports.

NCAA needs to get up off people's backs and let them play some football, ask me