Are Recruits Picking a School or a Coach?
April 1st, 2009 - byThe College Basketball world has spent the past 48 hours constantly debating whether John Calipari would leave the Memphis program he built from obscurity for the Kentucky Wildcats. The coverage was so intense that thousands of fans tuned into a webcast watching a door to the Memphis Athletic Department! The door even spawned a Facebook group titled I watched “The Door” For Hours.
Now that the suspense of Calipari accepting the Kentucky job is over, the real watch turns to his incoming recruits at Memphis. Apparently there were addendum’s to their National Letters of Intent allowing them to leave if Coach Calipari left for another job. They were widely considered the top recruiting class in the country and convincing them to attend Kentucky would send a tidal wave across college basketball recruiting. It’s not hard to envision the Wildcats in next year’s Final Four.
However, should this be in compliance with NCAA rules? Dick Vitale, for one, believes no.
Will this hire lead to future coaching hires being based on an incoming recruiting class? Is this fair? What do you think?
April 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Absolutely. The coach is a huge reason why a recruit ultimately picks a school. That is the same person they have spent months and years getting to know and developing trust with. How could a commit possibly be forced to stick with a school when they have no clue or influence over who the next coach will be? What if they simply do not get along with the next coach? What if the next coach is someone they had already deciced they did not want to play for while they were coaching at another school? I think it would be foolish to force a student-athlete to stay at a school when a significant reason for the commitment is now gone…
April 6th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Unless the National Letter of Intent program is changed, I don’t believe any signed recruit should be able to leave. If you aren’t going to follow the rules in place, what’s the point of having them? The program states that you are committing to a school, not a coach. In practice, this may prove to not be true, but this just means that the rules have to be changed.
April 8th, 2009 at 8:08 am
The COACH is the one that recruited the person, I personally know that if I was recruited i would go for both the school and coach. Mainly coach though because they are the ones who will make or break the team. The team will be nothing with out a good coach, and once your used to the coaching style of a particular person its hard to get accustom to another. They should make the rules that the recruits are picking coaches not schools.