College Recruiting Stoops to New Lows
January 26, 2003

Recruiters Hint at Violations at Other Schools

Soon after David Greene announced his commitment to play football at Georgia, a recruiter from another school showed up in Greene's living room to make one last pitch -- not for his school but against Georgia.  That and this report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Tony Barnhart
"He just kept saying, 'Georgia's got some problems over there,'" said Greene, who would not identify the recruiter. "He wouldn't get into detail. He said he just wanted me to know. It was clear he was trying to put some doubt in my mind."
The negative pitch did not work. Greene signed with Georgia and as a sophomore last fall led the Bulldogs to their first SEC championship in 20 years.
But was that recruiter wrong to try to change Greene's mind with vague suggestions that something was wrong at Georgia, which was, in fact, just a year away from firing coach Jim Donnan? You won't find a clear answer in the 460 pages of the NCAA Division I manual, and you won't find consensus among coaches and players.
There's a line, but it's vague
Everyone agrees there is an ethical line recruiters should not cross. That line, however, seems to jump around depending on the quality of the recruit and the pressures on the coaches involved. Those pressures mount as signing day, Feb. 5 this year, draws near. 
This time of year it's common to hear rumors about negative recruiting, trying to sway a recruit not by selling one program but by pointing out the weaknesses of -- or in some cases outright lying about -- the competition.
"There is a gray area here because what is one man's fact is another man's negative recruiting," said former Baylor coach Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. "If you tell a recruit that Texas Tech is way out there in West Texas and there's not a whole lot around it, is that negative recruiting or is that just a fact? If your graduation rate is 70 percent and the other guy's is 20 percent, is it negative to point that out? It can get a little tricky."
When offensive lineman Chris Spencer committed to Ole Miss, a coach from another school played the race card in a last-ditch effort to change Spencer's mind. Spencer is African-American. Ole Miss has worked hard to improve its image on race, but in recruiting, Spencer found out, everything is fair game.  That and this report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Tony Barnhart
"He said people at Ole Miss were a bunch of racists," said Spencer, from Madison, Miss. "He told me I would never be able to compete in the classroom and I'd flunk out. Then he told me that the white kids would never speak to me. It was amazing."
In other cases, the negative recruiting is more vague.
Quarterback Gavin Dickey grew up in Tallahassee, the home of Florida State, but he liked Steve Spurrier and decided to sign with Florida. When Spurrier left for the Washington Redskins in January of 2002, Dickey didn't waver on his commitment.
"A coach from another school told me that I had just made the biggest mistake of my life," Dickey said. "He told me how bad things were going to get at Florida with coach Spurrier gone. I wasn't very impressed by that."
That recruiter might feel vindicated; Florida went 8-5 with Ron Zook as coach.
Greg Golden, a cornerback from Fort Lauderdale, was leaning toward N.C. State.
"A recruiter kept telling me that N.C. State [enrollment 29,637] was not a big university and that it wasn't even on the map," Golden said. "They told me that a degree from their place would guarantee me a job but a degree from N.C. State wouldn't guarantee anything. One coach wouldn't let up on me, and it made me nervous. I almost changed my mind."
Golden stuck with N.C. State, and it paid off. This year as a sophomore he started on a team that went 11-3 and beat Notre Dame in the Gator Bowl. So that recruiter's prediction was wrong.
Why the negativity?
Why do coaches resort to negativity, half-truths and outright lies, particularly late in the recruiting process? The answer is easy. With head coaches making million-dollar salaries and with athletics budgets surpassing $40 million, the financial pressure to win -- and therefore the pressure to recruit well -- is greater than it has ever been. 
"Let's face it. Recruiting is a cutthroat business now," said Jamie Newberg, national recruiting editor for TheInsiders.com. "If you don't recruit, you don't win. If you don't win, you don't have a job. Does everybody do it? No. But it is certainly a part of the process."
"Head coaches have a lot of pressure on them, and they transfer that pressure to the assistant coaches to deliver recruits," said LSU assistant Lance Thompson, who also has worked at Georgia Tech and Alabama. "You can know all the football in the world, but if you can't recruit, you're not going to have a job long. And as you get closer to signing day some guys start to get a little desperate."
"They first try to define what they think is your weakness: The location of your school, the size of your school, the personality of your people," said Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. "They try to exploit that. And if that doesn't work, then some of them just make things up."
Archie B. Carroll, who teaches business ethics at Georgia, said negative recruiting not backed up by evidence is unethical.
"Even if that is your opinion, what you've done is plant a seed in a young person's mind that will not go away," Carroll said. "Ultimately, it says something about the character of that person if they are focusing on the weaknesses of the competition instead of their own strengths."
Alabama was prime target
But negative recruiting is widespread, especially in the South. When Dennis Franchione became coach at Alabama two years ago, he was surprised to see how far some schools would go to take advantage of Alabama's ongoing NCAA investigation.
Not only did opposing schools tell recruits that Alabama was going to get the death penalty, "but we also had schools telling recruits that if they came to Alabama, the NCAA was going to come in and take their scholarship away. That was the worst," said Franchione, now the coach at Texas A&M. "The other NCAA stuff was uncertain because we didn't know what was going to happen with the investigation. But telling a kid that he would lose his scholarship was just wrong."
It may be wrong, but lying to or misleading recruits is not among the specific activities the NCAA lists as unethical conduct. Lying to or misleading NCAA investigators is.
The American Football Coaches Association can suspend a coach from its organization for knowingly telling lies in recruiting. But the association says it knows of no such suspensions in at least a decade. That and this report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Tony Barnhart
"Oh, I've called another head coach lots of times when something flat out wrong is said about us," said Texas coach Mack Brown. "It's always the same. When the other coach is confronted with it, he always says, 'Coach, I never said that.' Now what do you do? It's his word against the recruit's."
That situation, Brown said, points out the most sinister part of negative recruiting.  
"What we've found is that if the young man has a strong family situation or a strong head coach, these kind of things don't affect him," Brown said. "But some coaches will find the young man who doesn't have a strong support system and take advantage of that. They get him alone away from an adult and do these things. When you see a player change his mind after every campus visit, that's usually what's going on."
"These guys are 17 and 18 years old, and a lot of them can't say no to an adult," said Georgia Tech quarterback A.J. Suggs. "I definitely think recruiters take advantage of that."
It usually backfires
More often than not, negative recruiting eventually backfires.
"People throw out all this stuff on Ole Miss, but if the recruit ever gets to our campus he realizes those people were lying to him," Spencer said. "That's when the other school loses all credibility."
The head coaches who are good recruiters know how to take a negative thrown at them and turn it into a positive. One year when Terry Bowden was the head coach at Auburn he was recruiting a player coveted by Florida State, coached by his father, Bobby. Terry Bowden suggested to the recruit that his father was getting up in years and probably would retire before the recruit's playing days were over.
Bobby Bowden found out about it, called Terry and said, "Son, I'll be at Florida State longer than you will be at Auburn."
Bobby Bowden, who turned 73 last November, was right. And to disarm those who would use age against him in this recruiting cycle, Bowden is getting ready to sign a new five-year contact.
"When recruits ask me about retirement I just show them my blood tests and let them take my pulse," Bowden said. "I ain't going nowhere."
Some negative recruiting backfires because players take the time to check things out.
"I had a coach tell me not to go to another school because they didn't have me No. 1 on their recruiting board but his school did," Golden said. "Well, I got on the Internet and was able to find out. I wasn't No. 1 on that school's board. I was like No. 8. That coach must have thought I was stupid or something."
When all is said and done the players, said those interviewed, are a lot smarter than the coaches think. Thanks to the Internet and the massive media coverage of recruiting, athletes pretty much know what is going on. The top recruits talk to each other on a regular basis and compare notes. The more educated the athlete becomes about the process, the less likely he is to be affected by negative recruiting. And that's a good thing.
"Coaches don't know this, but players laugh about this stuff a lot," said Clemson defensive tackle Nick Eason, a senior from Lyons preparing for the NFL draft. "We know that for the coaches it is a business. But a coach telling you not to go to a school one year could be working at that same school the very next year telling you how great it is. I don't hold any grudges or anything because those guys have got to make a living. But you've got to admit, some of the stuff they do is pretty funny."  That and