The point is there is no such thing as a solid commitment until signing day senior year. And really, stupid to evaluate the classes until the kids are closer to actually matriculating.
That's fine and good, except 95% of commitments are coming from verbal much sooner than that. They are verbal, but as good as gold. Terms, scholarships, all details of offer are all discussed and decided between coach and player/parents, and are exchanged in formal email. I have never heard of anyone scammed by a coach, even new incoming coaches honor verbal deals from exiting coaches. It is pretty rock solid.
You are completely out of your mind . If you are exchanging the deal in a formal email you and your future college coaches are committing a major NCAA violation. It's called s verbal for a reason.
I have to believe the posters coming on here bashing the verbals, are the ones that don't have one.
Okay folks, let me try to help, based on our experience only. My daughter was a 2016, and is now a freshman at a D1 school in a mid-major conference. Summer after freshman year (2013) of high school she started to get interest from a couple of schools. She made her first unofficial visit (that means we paid for the trip, per NCAA regs)during August of that summer. Over the next year she (we) made 7 more visits. During the summer after her sophomore year she started to get offers. Most of the time, percentages and such was not discussed in detail, but on two occasions it was discussed. During June 2014 (summer after sophomore year) she decided on which school and team she wanted. As instructed by her club coach, she then called the college head coach to accept the offer. We did not have a lot of detail but we knew it was a good offer. So, at this time, it was nothing more than a VERBAL commitment between her and the school. In November of her senior year of high school she signed her NLI. At no time were any details of the offer exchanged via email. I think that would be a violation of NCAA recruiting regs. As a matter of fact, no emails were exchanged prior to the legal date that such emails can be exchanged from college to player, which I believe is September of junior year of high school. Even then, it was after the verbal and fully within NCAA regs. Her club coaches are former college coaches and know the rules inside and out. I suggest anyone going through the process now to get very educated on what is and is not legal. It's not hard to do the research. As a side note, be realistic about how much the coach can offer. Remember, at most, the coach has 12 scholarships to hand out, across the team. So, do the math...30 players on a team divided by 12 scholarships. Most will get somewhere in the 20-25% range. Sometimes the upper classmen will get a little more as they go up the ladder. Everybody doesn't get an equal amount. If the team is not fully-funded then the coach has fewer scholarships to give and the percentages will be lower. Good luck.
Thanks for the input, but when you said"we did not have a lot of details, but we knew it was a good offer" the only real details you needed were percentage of tuition or total cost...Did you have those details? When my daughter was going through the process, all her teammates had the details that mattered in making the decision. IMO i dont think people should be making decisions without having the details, You dont want people reading this and saying its ok to not have details and commit, think thats the wrong message here.
You're right. My mistake...kinda got lost in translation. What I meant to say was that when the initial offer would come from a coach, especially from a school my daughter wasn't really interested in, all we knew was that the coach was making an offer, and it was up to us to contact the coach and ask those questions. Most of the time we didn't really pursue the offer other than to say thank you. That's how I should've written it. But, when it came down to the two she was interested in, we asked for further info about percentages and if it was a percentage of just tuition or a percentage of total cost. My daughter took the offer of percentage of total cost and it was at the school she liked more anyways. Thanks for calling me out on that. I do not want to pass on bad info. Trying to help.
