Letter of Intent Violations

Well I sucked anyway. So it probably wouldn't have mattered.

It's just another thing I don't understand: coaches are free to go anywhere at anytime. Athletes are stuck.

That's bullshit to me, especially when we're talking about 18 or 19 year old kids who may not be happy but are forced to put their futures at risk by transferring and sitting out a year.

EDIT: I forgot how to properly use an apostrophe. Full of fail, I am.

 

I've got a kid transferring to my school to play hoops, but I won't be able to say anything about the kid until the first day of classes in the fall (provided he goes to class that day). He isn't eligible to take part in the NLI program so that kid could theoretically agree to go to a dozen schools with those schools being unable to talk about it until fall. As long as the kid doesn't start taking classes, he can flip-flop amongst those schools all summer long.

 

The NLI program is based upon the idea that the prospective student-athlete will pick a school, and not a coach. If they are choosing the school based on the coach, then they are asking for issues when a coach changes schools.

The NLI is an agreement between the school and the athlete. If you have ever looked at one, you'll see that a number of people -- in addition to the head coach -- sign the document at the school showing the commitment of the school to the student-athlete.

Read more about the NLI program at:

http://www.national-letter.org

 

Picking a school "for a coach" isn't exactly what I meant. I'm talking about the fact that these kids are 18 years old when they pick the school. That's young. If a kid gets to a school and, for whatever reason, he's unhappy, he has to either tough it out or possibly put his career on the line to try and find a better situation.

Meanwhile, coaches can find that better situation whenever they choose.

I'm not sure I buy the whole idea that kids shouldn't pick a school for a coach anyway. Isn't the relationship with the coach supposed to be a big part of the college experience if the kid is an athlete? Maybe I'm naive, but when I was a high school athlete being recruited by several D-III and NAIA schools to play ball, the coach was pretty high up on the list of what I needed to like. And I wasn't even a kid looking to turn sports into a career, as many of these kids are.

I'm not saying kids should be able to come and go from schools as they please, transferring every year or anything. But I think it's somewhat odd the way the coaching/playing stuff works in college sports. Coach can leave, no penalty. Athlete leaves, penalty. Certainly you see some sort of problem in that, don't you? I thought about transferring in the middle of my college life, and I'm certainly glad I wouldn't have had to sit out a year at the other student newspaper if I had transferred.

I guess I'm failing to see the logic in holding a kid to some sort of contract when coaches aren't held to theirs.

 

I'm going through a similar issue with a prospective recruit that's supposed to be coming to the school I cover. It's rapidly getting ugly.

 

Without the NLI program and the penalties for transferring from one school to another, you would basically have free agency in college.

A kid could go to a school and when he plays well, decides to move up the food chain a bit. At the other end, the McD's All-American who gets to one of the blue blood schools doesn't play as well as expected gets cut and moves down the food chain.

That would be chaos.

 

The NLI program isn't run by the NCAA, so how could it be subject to rules violations?

If I had a kid, I would tell him not to sign an NLI. That way, if the coach left, you could go to another school without having to sit out a year.

 

I feel the same way, but unless you were one of the very best players in the country, I bet coaches would be pretty good at making you see the error of your ways and threatening to yank the scholarship till you did sign.

 

The NCAA has always been in charge of overseeing recruiting and one of the core rules for recruiting is that you can only recruit prospective student-athletes. Once a NLI is signed, under the rules, the student-athlete is no longer a prospect, making it illegal to recruit them.

 

The NLI is an agreement between the athlete and the school. The coach is some ways not even part of it. If the coach decides to leave, the school is still required to fulfill the scholarship commitment.

To put this in some other terms, when you took your current job, you were hired by the paper (or corporation that owns it). You might really like your SE or ME, but no matter what that individual does, you still are being paid by the paper (or corporation). If the SE or ME leaves, you still have your job (until of course the staff cuts come, but that's another thread) so I hope you picked the paper based on the paper and not the SE or ME who you'd be reporting to.

 

That can already happen. Scholarships are renewed on an annual basis. Coaches can cut them after any season.

Sounds kind of like your basic coaching career to me.

As I said before, it would create problems logistically, but it kills me that the NCAA punishes kids for not honoring their "contracts" when coaches don't have to honor theirs.

 

And I did. But the ME/SE was part of that too. But if the ME/SE leaves, I'm free to pursue another job without penalty.

It's a two-way street in the business world. It's different in college sports, where a coach is free to go at any time and the players aren't, at least not without penalty.