The Recruiting Hat Dance

[Dick Whitman]

Wasn't Natrone Means or Jerome Butts a backup their entire college career?

Nope.

I seem to remember Means being the big stud 1,000-yard rusher at North Carolina.

Are you thinking of Willie Parker?

 

[Big Circus]

Wasn't Natrone Means or Jerome Butts a backup their entire college career?

Nope.

I seem to remember Means being the big stud 1,000-yard rusher at North Carolina.

Are you thinking of Willie Parker?

Choo Choo Justice?

Means was definitely the starter at UNC. He had two 1,000-yard seasons.

 

[dixiehack]

It would only be funny once, but I'd love to see some 1-star line up hats for Florida, USC, Oregon, etc., then trash them before whipping out the cap for the D-II school downstate.

 

[Cosmo]

I was living between Charlottesville and Blacksburg at the time and never will forget Marcus Vick and his hat dance. He had a few hats on the table -- maybe just two, Virginia and Virginia Tech -- and said something along the lines of, "I choose the University of," and started reaching for the UVa hat, then went the opposite way and concluded with, "Virginia Tech." Yep, he chose the University of Virginia Tech.

Pretty sure that was Tyrod Taylor, actually.

 

[RecoveringDesker]

No, it was definitely Marcus Vick. It was in 2002 and I watched it on the TV station out of Lynchburg. I moved out of the area not long afterward.

 

[Riptide]

I don't like the hat dance because it contributes to the rock-star mentality that leads many of these kids astray in the end. Entitlement issues and all that. Now it's got to be orchestrated with smoke and mirrors, and now let's throw in some deception and some subtle taunts at the runner-up schools.

Now the kids demand the media stage, and the orchestrated adolation, and the YouTube videos, and they're not even out of high school yet. All that special attention contributes to the bigger problems that have corrupted or damaged a lot of college programs -- and a lot of those "rock stars" in the process.

 

[Versatile]

The problems that have corrupted and damaged college sports have little to do with the players.

 

[Riptide]

The problems that have corrupted and damaged college sports have little to do with the players.

Didn't say that wasn't so.
The hat dance has become an orchestrated circus.

 

[Batman]

The NCAA has a zillion ****ing rules about everything. Here's one they should adopt right now:

"At any press conference or other media event of any type conducted by a student-athlete to announce his/her choice of institution, the ONLY logo/insignia of any NCAA institution which may appear shall be the institution chosen by the student-athlete. If any article of clothing, paraphernalia, artwork or any other representation of ANY OTHER NCAA institution appears in public at any such announcement event, the student-athlete shall be ineligible for 50 percent of the scheduled contests, plus one, in the succeeding season of competition. It is the responsibility of the student-athlete to ensure, by any means necessary, nobody attending any such announcement event violates this rule."

So let's say a kid in Louisiana plans to sign with Alabama, and someone in the crowd is wearing an LSU T-shirt. By the letter of your law, the recruit ought to get dinged for that?
Or, it's up to the recruit to escort that person out of the building "by any means necessary" -- awfully vague wording for what's likely to be a 17- or 18-year-old with a large ego, sense of entitlement, and an entourage that's eager to enforce his will and unlikely to back down when the person in the audience says "no."
I don't mind the idea behind your rule. It'd be hard to enforce, though.

 

[Versatile]

The players get so little of the spotlight. Give them this.

 

[qtlaw]

The problems that have corrupted and damaged college sports have little to do with the players.

Bingo!

Wait, who's more important to the victory, Bobby Petrino at $3M/season or the star QB & RB at $30k/yr?

 

[Riptide]

The players get so little of the spotlight. Give them this.

I know. Part of me agrees. What a thrill for a 17-year-old.

It has led to extremes, though, and the media help fan the flames.

Who needs an entourage?

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

I wanna find the first high school kid who held a press conference for this bull**** and kick him in the ****. Now every moron with more than one offer feels the need to call all the local media to inform them he is attending Slap U. Narcissistic bull**** for a generation which already screams "Look at me!" more than any other prior.

 

[da man]

The players get so little of the spotlight. Give them this.

I know. Part of me agrees. What a thrill for a 17-year-old.

It has led to extremes, though, and the media help fan the flames.

Who needs an entourage?

Blue font alert!!!!!

 

[Riptide]

I wanna find the first high school kid who held a press conference for this bull**** and kick him in the ****. Now every moron with more than one offer feels the need to call all the local media to inform them he is attending Slap U. Narcissistic bull**** for a generation which already screams "Look at me!" more than any other prior.

That's how I meant to say it.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

It would only be funny once, but I'd love to see some 1-star line up hats for Florida, USC, Oregon, etc., then trash them before whipping out the cap for the D-II school downstate.

That reminds me of a scene in a late 80s/early 90s movie called "How I Got Into College". It was a humorous look at a few students of different backgrounds and them taking the SATs and trying to get into this one fictional college, along with the admissions staff and the debates they would have over who would get in. It starred Anthony Edwards, Lara Flynn Boyle and a few others.

Anyhoo, one of the characters was this star football player who was being recruited by all the big schools, including the fictional one. They showed the coach offering the kid stuff, the kid had a girlfriend who was always speaking for him and telling him what other schools were offering, etc.

So it comes down to decision day, and the kid is standing in front of a TV camera with GF and coach, who's smoking a cigar. Kid is asked a question, the girlfriend starts answering and he tells her to chill. Then he tells the TV woman that he loves football, but it's only a game, and decides he wants to indulge in intellectual pursuits. Then he puts on some nerd glasses as the coach's jaw drops and the cigar falls out of his mouth.

It was a fun little movie that I enjoyed especially because I could relate to it, trying to get into college myself at the time.

 

[Riptide]

"Breaking Away" was pretty much the same morality tale.

 

[Starman]

The NCAA has a zillion ****ing rules about everything. Here's one they should adopt right now:

"At any press conference or other media event of any type conducted by a student-athlete to announce his/her choice of institution, the ONLY logo/insignia of any NCAA institution which may appear shall be the institution chosen by the student-athlete. If any article of clothing, paraphernalia, artwork or any other representation of ANY OTHER NCAA institution appears in public at any such announcement event, the student-athlete shall be ineligible for 50 percent of the scheduled contests, plus one, in the succeeding season of competition. It is the responsibility of the student-athlete to ensure, by any means necessary, nobody attending any such announcement event violates this rule."

So let's say a kid in Louisiana plans to sign with Alabama, and someone in the crowd is wearing an LSU T-shirt. By the letter of your law, the recruit ought to get dinged for that?
Or, it's up to the recruit to escort that person out of the building "by any means necessary" -- awfully vague wording for what's likely to be a 17- or 18-year-old with a large ego, sense of entitlement, and an entourage that's eager to enforce his will and unlikely to back down when the person in the audience says "no."

It's intentionally vague.

What would happen would be the recruit, not wanting his eligibility for half his freshman season to be pissed out the window because some dumb **** in the audience decided to wear some other school's T-shirt in order to conduct a ****-grabbing stage show, would direct his "entourage" that any such persons were to be removed face first from the press conference to the asphalt parking lot outside.

Which is the exact idea. If recruits know, "if anybody at my press conference makes a public show of rubbing **** in the faces of other schools, my eligibility gets ****ed up," they will put a very forceful stop to it. Problem Solved.

 

[Riptide]

Well, you can't legislate a rule like that based on mandatory behavior by people offstage. All it takes is one outsider to intentionally screw things up.

Just keep the folks onstage from showing other team's stuff.

 

[Starman]

Well, you can't legislate a rule like that based on mandatory behavior by people offstage. All it takes is one outsider to intentionally screw things up.

Just keep the folks onstage from showing other team's stuff.

In practice it would probably work out that way but it would provide a big incentive for the hot**** recruits to order all the flunkies and jock-sniffers in the audience not to get any crazy ideas about staging crotch-grabbing pageantry of their own.

Hot**** recruits (in the sports that matter) are very used to issuing orders around the high school -- and having them followed. Might as well let them issue one for a good reason.