http://universe.byu.edu/node/1478
<div id="h2title"><h2>BYU football: The recruiting race</h2> </div>
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<h4 style="display: inline;">ByMatt Payne</h4> - Sun, 08/30/2009 - 21:15 </div>
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<div ="-caption">Photo by Andrew Van Wagenen. Orem High School played Payson High School last Friday night. </div></div></div>
BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall
has always been one to shy away from the spotlight, focusing on the
growth of the program as a whole rather than the success of individual
players or coaches. So it's only natural that the much-publicized
recruitment of athletes who are still juniors in high school might not
jive with his ideals.
One recent example is the case of highly-touted recruits Jake Heaps, Ross Apo and Zac Stout,
who held a news conference in a sports bar in downtown Salt Lake City â€" to the delight of hundreds of BYU fans in attendance â€" where they verbally committed to attend BYU come 2010.
The whole event seemed over-the-top, especially for high school
athletes, with Heaps' personal public relations representative handing
out news releases and personal highlights of the players being shown in
the background on a four-sided panel of big-screen televisions.
Mendenhall-ish? Not really.
While Mendenhall has expressed his excitement that the three high
school stars committed to attend BYU come 2010, don't blame him if he
is not so thrilled with the trend of recruits making themselves seem
like saviors of programs before they even suit up.
"What's happening now is the attention the recruiting and the young men
are getting in the off-season,"Â Mendenhall told KFAN radio in a recent
interview. "You're talking about that for kids who are still in their
formative stages and still trying to learn and make decisions and
manage their agency; that's a lot of responsibility. With all the
attention sometimes comes entitlement, and with entitlement sometimes
comes different behaviors that aren't so conducive to playing at their
best. So I'm always a little bit leery of the attention that the kids
are getting this early."Â
This attention on talented and charismatic players, though, is a natural byproduct of social media sites like
Facebook and
Twitter, as well as advanced coverage by media outlets like
ESPN and
Scout.com.
Fans can now feel more involved in the players' lives, even if they've
never met them personally, seen them play or even lived within a
thousand miles of them.
Heaps, for instance, has several Facebook groups dedicated to helping
him pick which college he'll attend: "Jake Heaps to Washington!"Â has
251 members, while "Jake Heaps / BYU Cougar"Â has 254. Another one,
"Tennessee Fans that Support Jake Heaps,"Â has 338 members.
It is well-known that Heaps has announced his intention to sign with
BYU next February, but that non-binding announcement will not stop fans
from various colleges around the country from begging him to change his
mind.
While cozying up to players on Facebook sounds like harmless fun, it can complicate the recruiting process for the schools.
Such was the case for North Carolina State, which was on the recruiting
trail of John Wall, the country's top-rated high school basketball
player. A student from the school created a Facebook group titled,
"John Wall PLEASE come to NC STATE!!!,"Â after which the athletic
department sent the student a cease-and-desist letter. He complied and
changed the group name to "Bring a National Title back to NC STATE."Â
In the end, Wall chose to play for the University of Kentucky. And
he'll likely be there for only one year before entering the NBA draft
in 2010.
All this leads to the question: What are colleges doing to manage the hype of new-age recruiting?
"I think the media has changed the whole outlay of recruiting,"Â BYU assistant football coach and recruiting coordinator
Paul Tidwell said. "With the Internet and
YouTube
and stuff like that, we're getting highlights from kids who are in the
9th grade. It's just getting earlier and earlier and earlier."Â
The problem is that schools cannot, within NCAA regulations, formally
recruit players until they begin their junior year in high school. And
even then, there are guidelines restricting the behavior and actions of
recruiters.
Tennessee, for example, committed two recruiting violations when it
hosted recruits for official campus visits in January. One of the
violations occurred when nine prospects participated in a mock press
conference at Neyland Stadium's media center, while the other stemmed
from a fog machine that was used as a recruit entered the stadium
during his official visit. Under NCAA recruiting rules, schools are
prohibited from simulating a game experience for recruits during their
visits.
Much of the responsibility for abiding by the NCAA's statutes falls on
the university and its football coaching staff, but Tidwell says that
as kids and their parents become more knowledgeable about the
recruiting process they should also try to see the recruitment from the
school's point of view.
"Sometimes parents contact us when their kids are still very young, and
we really can't do anything," Tidwell said. "Then they say ‘well, we
didn't hear from them so they must not be interested,' even though
that's not necessarily how it is."Â
Tidwell says there is even more pressure on BYU to identify and recruit LDS athletes.
"We want to be the first to offer scholarships to [LDS kids] if they're
going to be Division I players,"Â he said. "Sometimes if we're not the
first to offer then we hurt feelings. Sometimes they get offers from
other schools and by the time we offer them they ask us, ‘where were
you guys three months ago when we were getting these other offers?' So
it's becoming a race. In that way, we're just as guilty as anybody â€"
we've offered kids during their sophomore year or right after their
sophomore year â€" and we feel like we need to just to keep up."Â
All this effort from players, parents and coaches, though, does not
guarantee that everything will pan out. For every player that succeeds
at the college of their choice, there is a handful that are never able
to sniff the field on game day. And this, despite the hosts of talking
heads proclaiming them all to be "can't miss"Â or "sure-fire"Â players.
"There's a lot of pressure on the young kids with all the hype they're
getting to come in and play well,"Â Tidwell said. "I feel bad for these
young guys who get all this attention and then the fans expect great
things from them, and if they come in and don't have a great freshman
year everyone thinks they're overrated. Many people don't give the kids
a chance. The media can be pretty brutal at times."Â
Of course, the challenge of recruiting in a media-savvy age is not
unique to BYU. Coaching staffs across the country are all working under
the same rules and conditions to inject their football programs with
much-needed young talent.
"I'm trying to balance this idea of early commitments and staying ahead
of the game in terms of the kids that we need at BYU and who belong at
BYU with the kids' ability to handle all the attention,"Â Mendenhall
said. "I think it's a work in progress for all of us."Â
<div ="-caption">Photo by Andrew Van Wagenen. Orem High School played Payson High School last Friday night. </div></div>