Coach fired for banning Alabama from campus

Why in the heck would you ban a college from your campus? Any college visiting is a good thing, ESPECIALLY Alabama!

He was defending his player in a way he saw fit. Can't fault him for that.

Multiple D1 coaches have been banned from our campus over the past several years, for that same reason...offering kids, pulling the offer, then (literally) yelling at the kid for showing a lack of commitment to the college. We have gotten calls and offers by other schools, simply because they are willing and eager to work with my straight-shooting HC.

I agree, this was a HUGE missed opportunity by the principal over there. A little bit of support would have done more good for his high school than finding someone who kowtows.

Can't wait to apply for that one. Everybody loves a job where the principal has your back. 

No, you don't get it, when you make an offer then pull it why should I trust you. One of the things we teach athletes and students is trust and loyalty. They lost my support of them when the school promises to give one of my kids a scholarship then pulls it. It's like a friend of mine, he gave a ring each to three or four girls to get married, but those girls either ran around on him or said they didn't want to get married after leading him on for a while. You think I would want anything to do with those girls or that I would say anything nice about them.

Curious as to how much you have been involved in the recruiting process as well as how much understand what reportedly happened here

...and a knife in one hand!

No, this isnt about liking 2 girls, picking the cuter one, and the ugly one gets her feelings hurt....this is asking a girl to prom, color-coordinating your tux and dress, then dropping her when that girl with huge boobs winks at you a week before the dance. It's a subtle difference when discussing semantics, but a pretty huge gap in terms of integrity and ethics.

Over Christmas, WKU offered our LB. He called to accept the offer and commit.  They told they "were not accepting commitments at that time."  Turns out they offered over 400 kids in the Tampa Bay area.  

We banned a former coach of a local program a few years ago.  He'd offer 2 kids, 1 local and 1 far away.  Then after signing day, he'd drop the local and tell him to walk on and earn the scholarship.  He did it several times to schools in our area.  I'm sure it isn't an isolated scenario. It's also BS.

I may not be a a smart man but I know what messing with Saban gets you...Life won't be like a box of chocolates..

There's a simple solution - force schools to honor the offers they make, period. If they over-offer, then they get put on immediate probation and lose future scholarships while having to honor the ones they offered.

Oh - and the kids are not locked in until they sign, which is on signing day. No earlier, unless you want to open up an early signing period so kids can sign before their Sr. seasons.

Of course, even if they get hurt, the school has to honor the scholarship offer.

If as a coach you don't like it, too bad, then don't coach at a D1/2 school that offers scholarships. Plenty of non-scholarship colleges and HS's where you won't have that issue.

So a college could only offer 20 kids a year? How would that work?  Would be hard to bind colleges to an offer they make but not the kids.  What if you offer 20 kids and they all go elsewhere? Now what do you do since you didn't over recruit because you only can offer 20 kids a year ?

Okay, I take the "simple" comment back. It's not simple, but it's not rocket science either.

The bottom line to me is this - this should be about educating KIDS. If there is going to be an imbalance in the process, let it be in favor of the kids. For that reason I'm hesitant about forcing a kid to honor a commitment made early in the process. Remember, we're talking about 15-16-17 year old kids. But yeah, if there's a way to do that, sure.

Ultimately, I have no qualms about holding coaches to their offers while allowing the kids to theoretically screw them over. Oh, well. Welcome to the real world. In many cases, I have to legally honor my job offers while the candidate can accept and not show up. That's the real world. Coaches can pick up and leave schools, while the players are stuck and cannot transfer without sitting out. Fix that imbalance and maybe we can look at this too.

Bottom line - coaches will get more careful with their offers. They'll pursue fewer kids and make sure there's a connection. They'll walk away from kids who are collecting offers. Ultimately it will work out. You make 20 offers and the kids all take other offers? There will still be kids with other offers in hand who will be holding out for "their school", because they'll know that not every offer will be accepted. Same thing that happens now will still happen, except you you won't have a kid saying "I HAVE AN OFFER" and shutting down his recruiting only to be left hanging come signing day. He might still get left in the lurch thinking he was plan B when he was actually plan D, but that's on him at that point. Right now, you literally have kids who have no idea they're about to be left on the curb, and they have no plan B because a promise was made to them by an institution (not a person - this is an institution making the promise) and not kept. That needs to change.

I heard an idea floated around the the AFCA Conf this year, i'm sure no more than anecdotal, about the idea of having multiple signing days, each a few weeks apart, much like a draft.  Also, schools would be held to higher accountability to their offers.  It's a big shift in the ideas and processes of signing day, but could be more beneficial to everyone.

In short: Bama, USC, FSU, OSU, etc. all get to fight over the top few players. The dust settles.  More kids sign to other schools. More dust settles. Repeat.

I thought this idea had some merit. Schools can show interest, while kids can court multiple schools at once. Schools wont have to reach out of their league to offer.  If a low-level school wants to sign their QB on the 1st signing day, more power to them!  But this way, schools wont necessarily be throwing out feelers to 17 different QB's, talking each one up as the future of their program.  
Just an interesting thought...

Not sure the guys floating this idea around understand the recruiting process...or maybe you didn't hear it exactly right and there are more details.   There currently are multiple signing days because as the rule stands, the NLI signing day is the 1ST day that a binding agreement can be made. So the first Wednesday in February is "Signing Day", but athletes can sign an NLI on Thursday, Friday, Saturday...etc.    Athletes are not forced to sign on that day.  They can sign whenever.   They can wait a week..two weeks, a month..