The college recruiting process has always been a jigsaw puzzle with many rules and its confusing structure of hiring and firing of coaches. When a division one head coach leaves his job for a new job or is fired it creates a huge domino affect.
Now the university must go about the process of hiring a new head coach and new assistant coaches and that process could take weeks to fill the position. The problem is that high school players are being recruited by these coaches and won’t know where they could end up because of the coaching change.
Should they follow the coach who has gone on to a new job or sign with the school that recruited them? The players who are involved are affected by this coaching change. What other current players are on the roster? What is going on in their minds? Do they want to stay at the program or look to transfer?
The NCAA’s huge and ridiculous rulebook is not in favor of players transferring and being eligible to play if the coach who recruited them is either fired from that school or moves to a new job.
I believe these players should be given the opportunity to follow that coach if they choose to do so. It is not fair for a college player who wishes to transfer and must give up their eligibility, but a college coach can jump to new program whenever they feel like it or whenever an opportunity becomes available.
At the end of the college basketball season, it seems like its open season on the merry go round of coaches jumping from job to job.
It’s the same in college football. Sometimes these coaches quit on their team just before a bowl game to take another job leaving behind the players who played their guts out for that coach.
I think the larger picture here he is recruiting. Only the players are held hostage to a certain degree by college coaches and parents of high school student athletes who do not know or truly understand how recruiting works. In some situations, the parents don’t know what college or coach their son will play for.
The parents are also held hostage because they believe that a coach who is recruiting their son won’t be at the college they chose.
I understand the university wanting to replace the head coach with a new coach but sometimes in all of this shuffling around of coaches, the players are affected the most because there’s a new coach coming to the program and now those players have to adjust to that coach’s style of play.
The Letter of Intent is a contract between the high school athlete and the university which basically means that the university and the high school athlete are committed to each other for one year. The problem with that is that if that coach leaves the program or is fired before the start of next season, the players cannot get out of the Letter of Intent.
I don’t know what can be done to slow down the process of college coaches changing jobs so frequently or being fired so easily. The one thing I do know is that recruiting suffers.