When Aaron Cupp was a sought-after football recruit in Oregon in the mid-1990s, he really didn’t know if he was a blue chip, a red chip or a potato chip. Nobody told him whether he was worthy of five stars, four stars or a corner room at the Motel 6.
Less than 20 years ago when Cupp, th
e current Stanwood High School football coach, was going through the process, it was a different century in more ways than simple chronology. Cupp got plenty of interest from college coaches, eventually choosing to play at BYU, but it pretty much stopped there. There were no recruiting websites char
ting his ever-narrowing list of school choices, nor were there the constant public comparisons to every other player in his class.
Things certainly have changed in a short amount of time.
When Cupp went through another recruiting process recently as coach of incoming University of Washington football recruit Dexter Charles, he saw an altogether different process.
“Look at the explosion of recruiting,” Cupp said over the weekend. “Even the crawl on ESPNU now is all about where guys are going. Information is everywhere, and there’s a big push for kids to provide that information.”
The current generation of recruiting is about more than just athletes, parents and coaches. Everyone seems to want to be the first to know where a kid is going to school, and some services will pursue the information at almost any cost.
The constant flood of interest can be a drain on some high school athletes.
“When you’re known around the country or around town, everybody wants to know where you’re going. It gets annoying at times,” said UW junior basketball player Isaiah Thomas, a prized recruit who grew up in Tacoma. “It’s fun, but it’s annoying at times — especially if you don’t know where you’re going — being asked that question all the time.”
While most of the interest comes from friends, family and classmates, there also is a huge market for recruiting news on an ever-growing list of websites.
The phrase “recruiting websites” generates 4.71 million matches on Google.com. If every one of them charged $10 to join, not even Steve Sarkisian and his new $34 million contract would be able to afford the information.
“There’s a lot more individual groups that seem to be tracking high school athletes,” said Archbishop Murphy football coach Dave Ward, who was involved in the recruiting of current senior and future UW football player Tani Tupou. “… It’s more intense now. More people are demanding information.”
Whether it’s MaxPreps, Rivals.com, individuals like Tom Lemming or regional websites like Realdawg and Dawgman, there is no shortage of people demanding information on college visits, final lists and verbal commitments in the months leading up to signing day.
Current Jackson High School basketball star Brett Kingma, who verbally committed to Oregon in September, said he had a pretty steady flow of social-media surveillance before announcing his decision. UW’s Thomas and football player Desmond Trufant said they received plenty of calls and sometimes felt drained by the process.
“It’s a lot different now,” said Trufant, whose older brother Marcus went through the recruiting process 10 years earlier. “There are so many websites and so many ways to communicate with people now. You can communicate on the phone or emails now; it’s just totally different.”
Stanwood’s Charles is among those who have actually enjoyed the process. The senior offensive lineman, who is expected to officially sign with UW today, said recruiting websites weren’t overbearing as he waded through his decision last year.
“I understand” the interest, he said. “It gives people something to be excited about, gives them a reason to be excited about the future of their team.”
Charles said he fielded calls every couple of months and had an agreement with Dawgman.com to send a text whenever he got a new offer.
“I’m not sure how they even got my number,” he said, “but they contacted me after my junior year.”
The over-the-top interest has changed the landscape of recruiting in more ways than one. Some recruits are now apt to make a formal announcement early, just to get the vultures off their backs, then they continue to weigh their options without quite as much attention.
When an athlete eventually changes his or her commitment, it can lead to a firestorm of controversy — as was the case last week when Washington State football recruit Bishop Sankey switched sides of the Apple Cup rivalry and committed to UW.
The most notorious cases in these parts involved Portland basketball star Terrence Jones, who chose UW during a press conference at Jefferson High School and then changed to Kentucky a few weeks later. Such public waffling has become more and more common in basketball and football recruiting — due in part to the constant information floating around on the web.
UW men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said Tuesday that the influx of recruiting websites has had a negative effect on both the process and the student-athletes involved.
“They get worn down by the calls,” Romar said of the potential recruits. “If it weren’t for those from the internet calling so much, then I think they would field (calls from) the college coaches more. But it’s like, ‘I’m so sick of talking on the phone.’ And there aren’t rules. The coaches can only call a certain amount of times per month, (but for the websites) it’s open game.
“And if you’re a highly-recruited student-athlete, you’re talking about services throughout the country that are constantly calling you — at school, early in the morning, late at night. They can just get bombarded with all these calls and have to answer the same question over and over. … That didn’t happen before.”
Romar is among those who wish there were better restrictions on internet recruiting services. Boise State football coach Chris Petersen went one step further, telling The Associated Press this week that there should be an early signing period for football recruits to quell the constant badgering and cut down on spring de-commitments.
“It’s a tough process anyway,” Petersen told AP, “and it can just get tougher on the kids.”
Archbishop Murphy’s Ward said there is a bright side to all the attention.
“It’s a good thing in a lot of ways because it means you have some good athletes,” the coach said. “So we don’t mind it.”
Like it or not, the explosion of recruiting news appears to be here to stay.
Today, a class of kids will officially get the callers off their backs by signing letters-of-intent. But there’s already a push for information from the Class of 2012, the Class of 2013 and beyond.
Where it stops, nobody knows.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
