Duke1632 wrote: Therefore, what billybud says makes the most sense: that neither committed nor an LOI is (legally) binding, but the NCAA can use extra-judicial means to enforce it.
What Mr. Billybud says always makes the most sense. That is why he is so darn aggravating. With that said, it is not quite as pure and innocent as he may imply. The reality is, during the recruiting process, coaches lie. Not stretch the truth, they lie.
The other reality is this. If you are a top notch recruit, the FSU's and Ohio States and USC's will find you. They have recruiting budgets that are close to limitless.
Smaller schools, and that is probably 80 of the 125 don't have those budgets, so student athletes are sending resume's and film trying to get someone to notice them. And what the kids do is send it to every school the think they may want to play for, so they send the package to FSU, OSU, BYU or USC. This starts when they are sophomores, maybe earlier. They start getting weekly letters from all of these school. Yes...weekly. The letters say, keep playing hard, study hard, we are tracking you, etc, etc, etc. The letters are never, never discouraging. Not one will say, "No, you suck. You will never be good enough to play for FSU, OSU, BYU or USC." When it is permissible for contact the players, letter are all right all year long, these schools will give the kids calls and say the same thing. Then what happens when it gets close to the moment of truth, larger schools, where the kids really want to play, will call almost weekly to the kids and say, "we have a spot for you, don't commit yet, we have just a couple of more things we need to look at." This will happen up to and including the signing day. And the kid holds off until the last moment believing the large schools are sincere. Then the kids hears nothing, zip, zero. And so they call the smaller schools that have shown an interest and the ones that are still calling on LOI day and make a decision. This most often happens in the High School Coaches office. In my opinion, there is nothing virtuous about the recruiting process for the vast majority of student athletes. (And if you think this is isolated, then at the next game you go to, go sit with the parent of the players...they always sit in a section together mixed with parents of both teams. It works out far better than you would think it would, everyone is looking out for the other parents kid and when he goes in and makes plays. And they tell stories about how the kids went through this process. Most are grateful their kids are playing and their education is being paid for, they just think the system stinks and are appalled at the dishonesty of the recruiters. That is my take on it also.)
