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football Edit

Ferentz right to question recruiting tactics

Brian Ferentz shined a light on a troubling trend in college football, meaningless early offers
Brian Ferentz shined a light on a troubling trend in college football, meaningless early offers

It seems like any time Brian Ferentz speaks, headlines usually follow.

This week was no exception. Ferentz appeared on the Hawk Central podcast from the Des Moines Register this week and offered a few thoughts on football recruiting.

What ensued was somewhat of a firestorm for speaking the truth and for making observations that frankly, a lot of us who follow recruiting were seeing with our own eyes.

Now, any time you mention rival schools, those who support that school are going to take notice and probably take exception to the comments. That’s simply the nature of sports and fans. However, I don’t think his intent was to create friction. It was simply to shine a light on what’s going on with the latest trend in recruiting and say in his opinion it’s not a good or fair one for some prospects involved.

Honestly, what Ferentz said isn’t all that shocking. He expressed concern with the proliferation of early offers to prospects, particularly to in-state prospects, and what it means. It’s a fair concern from where I sit because an excessive number of early offers, numbering in the hundreds, isn’t healthy for the sport or recruiting. Essentially, what’s happening all over college football recruiting is what I would call speculative offers. Those are offers where a school will tell the prospect they have a scholarship opportunity, but if that prospect were to call and commit, the school wouldn’t accept it. They will accept some, but not all.

In particular, Ferentz mentioned two rival schools in Iowa State and Minnesota.

“What has sped things up (in recruiting) in our state, especially, is the guys in Ames and then the new guys in Minneapolis seem to have no problem really throwing early things out,” Ferentz said on the podcast. “What I’ve learned – certainly about the guys in Ames, and I think we’ll find this about the guys in Minneapolis — what does an offer really mean? I can tell you this much: If the University of Iowa offers you a scholarship and you commit to us, we intend to sign you.”

Here is the difference from Iowa’s perspective, and Kirk Ferentz has said this many times, if they offer you, then it’s an offer to commit at any time. Now, that could change if the position fills up during that recruiting cycle, but if a player is offered and they have a spot open at that position, they can commit to Iowa and it will be accepted.

That’s how Iowa has operated since Kirk Ferentz arrived. That’s not how many other schools operate and Brian Ferentz took issue with some of the actions in Ames regarding a couple of in-state prospects.

“I think you have to look no further than in-state, to see there were a lot of offers in the 2018 class that went out very early out of Ames. And I’m not sure all those guys were able to commit to them if they wanted to, because some of those guys have since gone other places,” Ferentz said.

Ferentz can’t mention the names of the prospects due to NCAA rules, but we can. One of the prospects is Andrew Todd, a 2018 offensive lineman from Cedar Rapids Washington High School. Todd was offered early by the Cyclones staff and verbally committed to Miami, OH this spring. This isn’t meant as a dig at the Red Hawks, but certainly if he was ready to commit to a school, he’d probably pick the in-state school in the Big 12 over a MAC school. The fact is ISU just stopped contacting him and didn’t return calls.

The other prospect is believed to be Zach Ross, a 2018 offensive lineman from Des Moines Dowling. Like Todd, Iowa State offered early and remains his only high major offer. There’s some question right now as to if he could commit to Iowa State if he decided to do so today.

Iowa State can do as they please and it’s certainly not my place to be critical of how they run their recruiting operation. They can do what they want as far as I am concerned.

Tough conversations with recruits is part of the business. There are times when a school and a coach may have to have those conversations with a prospect to tell them the offer is no longer on the table. Heck, there are times when Iowa’s coaches have had to do that or even back away from a commitment, like they did a couple of years ago with an early verbal pledge from a quarterback. It happens and it’s all part of the business. You have to have those conversations, especially with in-state prospects and frankly, the comments from Brian Ferentz are should be seen as almost trying to help, but I know given the rivalry I know they weren’t received that way. I do know this, the comments from Brian Ferentz weren’t made because the Cyclone coaches got under his skin, as was written by someone sharing the Cyclone perspective.

The high school coaches in the state of Iowa are a pretty tight knit bunch and it’s fair to say that word will travel fairly quickly if a state school is perceived as not doing right by the prospects in Iowa.

I won’t claim to know a whole lot about the philosophy behind Coach Campbell’s recruiting at Iowa State, but the numbers speak volumes. He’s offering a lot of prospects. By a lot, I mean 334 scholarship offers, which is the most by any power five school. I know sometimes just to stay in the recruiting game, you have to offer, but 334? It’s fair to wonder (as Ferentz did), how many of those prospects, if they called tomorrow, could commit? I can guarantee that not all of them are committable offers.

Iowa simply operates differently. I won’t say that one way is better than the other, but it’s certainly a contrast. A few years ago, Iowa adjusted to the rapidly changing times and did something similar to Iowa State, but on a much smaller scale. They extended a lot of early offers, and by a lot I mean the number was just over 90 around this time of year. The recruiting game was changing and Iowa had to change with it. As of today, the Hawkeyes have 93 scholarship offers in this class, which is about where they have been every year since they adjusted their strategy. And like I wrote earlier, if the offer is out, it means it’s there to be taken at any time. Sure, Iowa wants prospects to visit before committing, but the philosophy is grounded in an offer means an offer.

Each coach is different in the way they approach the recruiting process. We will never have a uniform philosophy in college football among coaches. But, you would hope that coaches would do right by the kids within the borders of the state and not lead them to believe they have an offer only to find out later that their calls aren’t getting returned and learning the hard way that the scholarship offer wasn’t real.

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