By Matt Prehm, June 18, 2008
Special to Duck Sports News
Over the past few years football recruiting has grown in popularity to the point that websites such as Rivals.com and Scout.com have become million dollar industries, helping football fanatics get through the large portion of the year that football is not played.
Fans are becoming more and more concerned with winning the “second season” of football, recruiting season. Coaching staffs across America are trying to land as many top flight recruits as possible, but also have to now deal with recruiting websites’ rankings and their school’s fan’s opinions of whether they are bringing in good talent.
Some coaches have been hard-core recruiters who tend to never sleep and are out recruiting nonstop. Pete Carroll at USC and Nick Saban at Alabama come to mind when you think of coaches who bend the rules as far as they can to snag that next top recruit.
Then there’s coaching staffs like Mike Bellotti’s at Oregon, who don’t obviously try to find loop holes into any rule they can think of such as taking part in the “bump” recruiting tactic in which the coach might “conveniently” bump into a star recruit at his high school while visiting a high school coach.
Before the news out of the L.A. Times involving the Oregon staff pulling a scholarship offer for committed safety/linebacker Xavier Ramos, the Ducks were considered respectable. Oregon’s football staff had been known as a school that followed the rules and were considered to be a very respectful staff by recruits and their families.
The recent comments from Xavier Ramos’ head coach, Todd Therrien at St. Bonaventure, regarding the Oregon staff has created a large cause of concern. Therrien is so furious with Oregon assistant Coach Steve Greatwood that he said Ducks representatives will no longer be welcome on campus. “I don’t want to see anyone from Oregon,” he said Monday.
With that news coming out of the L.A. Times, Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti was granted permission from the NCAA to release a statement on the matter.
Bellotti claimed the fault lay in a communication breakdown by the coaches. They simply accepted commitments from two players when only one scholarship was available at the position.
It is standard practice when a staff fills up a position of need to inform all other recruits that had been offered that scholarship their offer isn’t available anymore. However, rarely does this happen when two kids looking for the same spot commit around the same time. Even more scarce is the fact it happened this early in the recruiting process.
It’s a lose-lose situation for all parties involved in my eyes, as the Duck Staff now seems to have a black eye when it comes to recruiting even if it was a simple breakdown in communication between the coaches and the recruits. Ramos seemed set on a school and was going to get a free education but now must find a new opportunity.
However, the actions taken by Ramos’ head coach are raising eyebrows. Why go out and slam the Oregon program like this? It’s still very early in the recruiting process and there is plenty of time for Ramos to find another school that will offer him a scholarship.
The situation of another St. Bonaventure player from last year’s class who did not qualify to play at Tulsa also raises some concern. It is strange there have been miscommunication issues regarding players’ loss of scholarship with Therrien in the last two months.
Lastly, why does a school have to stick with an offer this early in the recruiting process?
Is it fair to schools that have commitments from players who then learn the player decided to go elsewhere a few months later? Why should a school keep its scholarships tied up to one player when that same player can leave the school out to dry a few months later? This situation goes both ways.
I bet we don’t know the entire story on this situation yet and until then I will continue my support for the coaches and the Duck staff. Their track record over the past decade outshines this one unfortunate incident.
There can be no doubt, though: things will be interesting as this story unfolds.
