Originally Posted by Anonymous
This will be long winded but hopefully valuable to some family considering making a college early commit decision in the next weeks/months


there is nothing wrong with a 9th grader giving a verbal commitment with a 20%- 30% athletic scholarship offer to a great school. Why do you care if he does? How exactly does it harm the kid or the game?

So what if he never even steps on the field in college, he is on a D-1 team with all the privileges that come with being a d-1 athlete...

think academic advisers and tutors that are not available to the average freshman non athlete. think paying less for the same education than those non athletes. think being part of a team and transitioning from high school to college as part of a culture that requires work ethic and accountability

think of his first interview after college in his chosen field and being able to say, I played d-1. total commitment to a team while maintaining a great gpa. I hire a few new kids every year and the d-1 athletes (whether or not it is lax, whether or not they ever step on the field) always have an advantage over the non athletes because i know that any kid that can maintain good grades while working full time (yes-d-1 athletics are full time jobs) are more likely than not to be workers. doesn't work out 100% of the time, but the odds are in my favor to hire the d-1 athlete kid over the kid that got through with the exact same gpa but no athletics...

for all those saying late bloomers will eventually rule the day-good for those kids, i wish them and their families nothing but the best. but please be realistic, the top 20 programs, with the most dollars to spend on lax scholarships (most d-1 lax programs are not fully funded, those that are fully funded have only 12.5 scholarships to parse out among 45-60 kids-the math doesn't lie) are mostly fully committed by fall of soph year. It means that the late bloomer needs to be an incredible stud just to get a spot on that team, and forget scholarship money in year one. yes, maybe that kid will get dollars in year two, I hope so for him. But it means that the late bloomer's family is paying ($60k school at 30% scholarship = $18k) $18k more than the early commit kid in year one...

So, think of early recruiting this way-

your kid is not a lax player nor does he know what he wants to do with the rest of his life, but nonetheless, JHU, Penn state, Ohio state, Michigan, Virginia, unc, duke..., offered your kid the ability to get a special discount of 20%-30% reduction in year one price tag with an assurance that he will get into that school as long as he maintains a gpa of xxx with SATS of xxx. He likes all of those schools as do you as they are all top 50 academic institutions according the us news and world report.

he doesn't have to stress over the application process or worry about making his HS extra curricular and community service hours look better than everyone else that also wants to go to that school. He get a special pass to get in as long as he gets the grades, sounds like a pretty good deal doesn't it? If he goes to JHU and wakes up after a year and hates it, he transfers, happens all the time to athletes and non athletes alike. not the end of the world


let's please also remember the college coaches are the ones asking kids to commit. they come offering scholarship dollars and free meal plans and woo them by bringing them to big time college football games and introducing the kids and their parents to the privileged world of d-1 athletics.

Do you all think you are smarter than these coaches? Do you think you are a better judge of talent? Please understand, i mean no disrespect to the kids that aren't fully mature. they will grow when they grow and we all want them to be successful in whatever they choose.

But please stop calling the kids that committed early crazy or saying that they are
somehow ruining the game. they are offered an early spot at a great school and a special discount (still need to get the grades and still no guarantees until you sign the national letter of intent).

My fam has been to all the schools i listed above (2018 early commit) and the range of athletic and academic dollars varied from school to school. My kid liked all the schools, as did the rest of our clan. We chose based upon some of the key criteria below, with different levels of value depending on how important the specific criteria was to our situation -no snarky comments please, this is meant to help some other 2019 fam that is making a decision soon.

-perceived fit academically with an idea towards a major, but he really doesn't know what he wants to do to make a living. He had interest from ivy, but it is important to understand your kid. not everyone-even if they have a 98 gpa, is going to be able to handle the academic pressure at an ivy...to each his own.

--academic support and tutors-not all the schools are equal in this regard, if you have any doubt whether your kid will need this support, make sure you know exactly what is offered. In our experience, the big football schools had the most service relating to this aspect. I was surprised that a few of the schools had very little free support

-perceived fit socially-felt like it was the right size institution for my kid

--size of the campus

--living arrangements-does your fam like those dorms, will he get tripled, how far are dorms from practice facility, from class rooms, from town...

-academic ranking nationally

-coach and team culture (this one was really tough, we liked all the coaches, some more than others, but will that coach still be at that school in three years?) Is my kid a piece of meet because the coach's number one priority is winning a national championship? For this one, and several of the other criteria, i think it is important to talk to some of the current players and their parents. you would be surprised at how open people are--both good and bad

--money offered for athletic scholarship- note every coach told us, yes there is no legal contract, athletic scholarships are year to year, but we guarantee you you will get no less than this percentage all four years. we are smart enough to know that athletic dollars are year to year. do coaches lie? i am sure some do and i am sure some don't. ask the parents of a current player that is not the team stud. they will tell you the truth

--money offered for academics-assuming he maintains gpa of xxx, he will get this amount in academic dollars. note, these academic dollars are more valuable than athletic dollars, not necessarily in terms of percentage, but in terms of the annual renewal. 3.0 in college gpa each year and the academic dollars renew...some schools had no academic dollars for which my kid would qualify

--alumni network--it just means that potentially, you will be more likely to land a job after graduation based upon a strong alumni network, that is the theory anyway

--financial aid- we didn't spend any time on this because my fam can't qualify for aid, while that in and of itself sucks, it means we are lucky in the big picture

I hope this helps someone...