Recruiting is such a messy monster. It is the lifeblood of college athletics and its impact on the landscape of the revenue sports will only get larger and larger as coaches make more money and are given shorter timetables in order to be successful.

Here’s the problem with recruiting. In 2008 and during the age of the internet, recruiting is very public, but at the same time very personal to the participants. While it might seem that everything is in the hands of the college coaches, the situation that just worked out for Oklahoma in the battle for all-everything Lufkin defensive tackle Jamarkus McFarland is just a mess. The staffs at USC, LSU and Texas and even Oklahoma cannot, by the rules of the NCAA, defend themselves against titillating, half-sourced and unsubstantiated musings of a media market paper basically just trying to matter. Even the school that McFarland chose, Oklahoma, is not painted in the light it would prefer.

Jamarkus McFarland chose OU over Texas, but the Longhorns will be just fine in the long run.

To even pen a story based on biased, unsubstantiated agenda-driven information borders on irresponsible journalism and jumps over the border when the accused (LSU, Oklahoma, USC and Texas) cannot offer counter information.

Okay, back to recruiting being personal.

To say that there are hundreds of things that go into recruiting is an understatement. Recruiting is an inexact science. Recruiting is based on a school showing its best features and hiding its worst while a recruit is doing the exact same thing. With the limited time that is allowed, according to the NCAA, for a staff and a player to get to know each other, recruiting is the equivalent of dating the girl in the freshmen dorm your first semester of college. You don’t really know who you are dating; you are dating that girl’s representative and more often than not, she is dating yours. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

A high school recruit can come from a stable family, mass instability, homelessness, guardianship or from a state school or orphanage. Some recruits understand the virtue of a scholarship and how leveraging it can change their life forever. Some athletes choose schools and most of the decision is based around academics. Some recruits walk into recruiting with their hand out and march into, many times, a dirty business. Still other recruits, even understanding that less than one half of one percent of scholarship athletes in the revenue producing sports play professionally, check into college and are just hoping to stay eligible so they can get to “the league.” They find themselves in majors like family studies, community studies and other manufactured degree plans to keep athletes eligible and the money rolling.

There is the kid that has the overbearing father who is trying to live vicariously through his son who will always be a headache. There is the AAU coach who is trying to leverage one of “his” players into a change of status and income for himself. There is the family that looks at its kid as a retirement account or a way “out” of whatever situation it is in.

A few years back I was in Lovejoy, Ga. speaking to a group of 250 high school juniors, their families and coaches from Georgia and Alabama and other places in the south. My partner (a head high school football coach from Iowa) and I were there talking about the recruiting process, education and helping the athletes and their families and even coaches manage through the process. We talked about what to expect, what to look for and even some of what to avoid.

While we were at our book tables after the presentation I had a family walk up to me and ask if they could talk to me. The football player surely passed the eyeball test. He was a tight end who was receiving mail from SEC, ACC and Big East schools but his only offer was from Div I-AA powerhouse Georgia Southern. With him was his grandmother, his mother, his three sisters (two with children of their own) and his girlfriend. After we were done with our 1.5 hour presentation this family pulled me to the side for one very simple question when the grandmother asked me, “How long does he have to go to college before he can go to the NFL?” After a brief conversation with them where I was more real than politically correct, I walked back over to my table and told my partner, “Damned kid doesn’t stand a chance!”

If you talk to 25 different kids you will get 25 different criteria for a school of their choosing. Some kids choose schools because the Georgia Peach that showed them around on their visit was hot. Some kids choose a school because the party scene is “off the chain.” Some choose a school because that school has put his position in the NFL many times over. Yet others choose Oregon State over UCLA in basketball because they want to be a big fish in a little pond. Whether it’s the climate, the coach, the tradition, the possibility of winning or religion, recruiting is extremely personal.

Universities are full of coaches that will openly say, “I’m a dream seller,” when talking about recruiting. The internet has stopped much of the lying about the depth chart because recruiting conversations find their way to public space now, but there are plenty of coaches lying to recruits every day of the week. Many view college football as a manufacturing facility and recruits are the inputs that they use to make their P & L work.

I don’t know McFarland or his family.

I do know that when most decisions are made around the country, kids and parents call coaches of the schools not chosen and thank them for the opportunity and for recruiting them, but tell them that they are choosing another university.

I also know that the “Andre Hastings” style of recruiting (SI cover as a high schooler) creates a sensationalized self opinion that could end up being dangerous and ultimately hurting the kid.

I also know that people who cannot be proud of the decision they made without tearing through the flesh of the decisions they did not make really have no idea how to be successful, let alone significant.

Mack Brown and the Texas staff have a remarkable record when it comes to missing out on some of the best high school players and how it ends up keeping toxic personalities out of and away from the program. I don’t know that any of us can say that McFarland and his family are toxic but this could end up being a good miss. While the Longhorn fans might hate that he went to their biggest rival, charge that off to the game. If the Longhorns can miss on a generational running back like Adrian Peterson and still win a national championship for Texas during his time at Oklahoma, the folks in burnt orange will be just fine.

Some kids are just bad fits and sometimes, it’s not just the kid.

What started out in the 1980’s as a rule to prevent showboating and other self congratulatory activities as were being shown by players at “The U” (University of Miami) has become a drain and a hindrance to the game of college football.

Jake Locker scores on third and goal with two seconds left and was flagged for excessive celebration and that is a 15 yard penalty.  It makes the PAT 35 yards and the PAT was blocked and the huskies lose by one.  It was a 35 yard kick after the penalty from the middle of the field and should have been made the bigger issue is Washington being in that scenario to begin with.

He threw the ball over his shoulder and celebrated with his teammates.  That’s it.  Besides the fact that the president of the University of Washington should be on the phone to the Pac 10 office making sure they realize what took place and what the ramifications could be to the Pac 10.

The referees took the ball out of the hands of the players and the coaches and now for the last two weeks players are playing a greatly emotional game and constantly trying to stifle their emotions after something great happens.

The rules were created to prevent grandstanding and ‘hot-dogging’ but showing youthful exuberance and celebrating with your teammates should not only be overlooked but encouraged.  It has to be a judgment call in the hands of the official.

Here’s the deal, passion fuels sports.  It just does and nobody should debate that.

The difference between a lot folks playing college sports at a high level and folks walking the street and just sitting in a lecture is passion.  It is a passion to be great.  It is a passion to take big risk.  It is a passion to lay it all on the line.

The same passion that makes them play at that level has to be controlled when they hit the end zone and that is not right.

I’ll say it again, passion fuels sports.  Passion fuels stadium renovations.  Passion fuels season tickets sales.  Passion fuels the million dollar salaries.  Passion fuels school keeping kids eligible as opposed to educating them.  That passion keeps the ancillary staffs and companies in sports, academics, administration, concessions, construction, and so many others in their 100k salaries.

The passion for sports is feeding hundreds of thousands of families.

Even though some coaches won’t acknowledges the internet and even dislike it obviously won’t give credence to the fact that the passion that fuels the growth and development of message boards, blogs, constant conversations, the Big 10 network and a possible Longhorn Sports Network is the same passion that allows universities to make millions of dollars and coaches to make their million dollar salaries.

So the burden bearer, the conductor of the passion, the reason for the passion can do everything from carry the marketing arm of a university to paying for women’s rowing to adding to the general scholarship fund but to display passion, that’s a “no no”.

The schools cannot hide the fact that they are passionate.  They are passionate for the money and they are passionate for what sports bring environment wise to a college campus.  That’s why the great academic schools around the country like UCLA, Michigan, Texas, Berkeley, North Carolina, Georgetown, Miami (FL), Virginia and so many other great academic schools allow some young men into school for football and basketball that wouldn’t otherwise be qualified to be on campus unless they worked in the janitorial pool.

Let the kids have some fun.  They’re lining your pockets and will continue to do so.  I am not an advocate of paying student athletes but the least you can do is let them experience the passion that you get to show in the stands, in the suites and at the bank.

Jake Locker did not taunt his opponents, he celebrated with his teammates.  He celebrated because his coach, one of the best people in the game, has his job in serious jeopardy because he graduates kids but is not winning.  He celebrated because the

University of Washington program has been kicked in the head sideways for the last couple of years.  Finally he celebrated because the Husky fan base has had their dreams deferred on numerous occasions. 

Washington was playing against a Top 15 team and had a chance to tie with two seconds left on the clock.
Seriously, who wouldn’t celebrate like crazy in that situation.

How many times this weekend will I have to see emotion and passion stifled because some ‘suit’ wants to control the actions of a young kids that just made 80,000 scream?

Let the kids play!