Schools offer about 10 1/4 scholarships a year.

Most schools were willing to gamble 2-4 of those scholarships on 8th or 9th graders.

Overall that is not much of a gamble if you get 6-8 legitimate safe kids when they are older and probably 1/2 of the early recruits do pan out.

Not that big a change for the schools other than no longer wasting resources on reviewing younger kids.

Big change for the kids since now they don't have to stress about recruiting until their sophomore year.