Tony, the problem isn’t our naiveté. It’s that we’re being asked to swallow the notion of coaches jumping ship after signing day as a matter of routine while at the same time having the issue of player transfers presented as a threat to the American way of life.
I think the word you’re looking for is hypocrisy.
Get The Picture 
My question is what kind of a recruiting effort is a guy making when he knows he’s out the door after signing day? If a coach is bluffing his way through the recruiting process it seems kids and their parents would detect it and develop doubts about that program. Why not just fess up and say I’m recruiting you for State U but I might not be there? The way coaching is 5 schools could be recruiting a kid and all 5 of them could easily be about to make staff changes after signing day.
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I would say your reputation as a recruiter is paramount to your success, and if you slack off, the word will get around and bite you in the ass.
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Tony is a pawn of the oligarchy running college football. He has drank the koolaid. He would tell you that NCAA football is an “amateur sport that is growing young men” and the fans are too stupid to understand this. I’ve been over him for a while.
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95% of the commenters here at GTP know more about college football than the self-proclaimed “Mr. College Football” does. I refuse to read his drivel.
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Amen, most irrelevant commentator since Beano Cook was still commenting for 25 years after he died!
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Companies blindside employees and employees take new jobs every day. They don’t tell you when you’re interviewing, “we’re trying to sell the company” or “I’m not going to be your boss for long.” Nope, It’s always a secret. That’s observation, not justification.
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Very true but one major difference is; the actual college doesn’t close or move to another city. The players need to pick a college not a coach to play for.
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they should pick based on the factors that matter to them. And if the college no longer meets their needs they should be free to find another that does meet their needs without penalty.
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+1
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It seems you are an advocate of open free agency for college players. If that were the way it worked would you also be OK with teams being able to cut players mid season if they weren’t living up to expectations and replace them with a player who wanted to transfer in?
What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.
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“Companies blindside employees”
There is your difference. Employees are paid salaries based on a competitive market.
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Like I said, it was an observation, not a justification. Personally, I think they should be able to transfer; I don’t believe that most of them would do it anyway.
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I agree with the “pick the school, not the coach” idea. The player is going to play football or not, depending on how good he is no matter who the coach is. In theory, the kid is signing a scholarship so he can get a paid for education, not so he can have four or five years hanging out with his new best friend/mentor/father figure coach. The players, all of them, are one play away from their football career coming to a permanent end. The chance of them making it in the pros is statistically very slim. There are only about 1600 NFL players in the entire world, including the practice squad players, there are less than 1500 on the active rosters. Each year, approximately 3500 college players are eligible for the NFL draft and only 256 are drafted. Another 100 or so are invited to the combine adding up to about 350 total opportunities for a player to make an NFL team. About 300 end up making a team and the average career lasts 3.3 years. These kids really need to focus on the education part of the program, the campus, the feel of the town they will live in, their plans after college, in short, all the things non athlete students think about when selecting a college and not base their entire decision on the football part.
Coaches, on the other hand, are grown men making the best moves for their career. If a coach isn’t performing, he will generally be fired (unless he is on Mark Richt’s staff). If he is offered a better job, he will generally take it. No coach can be blamed for this. While the coach is employed by program A he has to do the job he is being paid to do, part of which is recruiting. No one can expect the coach to tell recruits “hey I’m looking at another job but you should still go to “A””.
Anyone who doesn’t understand these things is truly naïve or views college football as nothing more than the NFL minor leagues.
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I guess if kids shouldn’t take the staff into account then we should just have regular university recruiters out instead of coaches.
We tell kids that they should look at the school instead of the coach, then we set the wolves on them to try to impress them with the program.
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Count me as one who views Division 1 as no more than the NFL minor leagues. And to your comment up above, yep let them transfer in and out during the season as needed and make it officially the NFL minor leagues.
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“The player is going to play football or not, depending on how good he is no matter who the coach is.”
Not always the case, kids often find success after transferring from a school where they were buried on the depth chart (see Mo Williams 2016). Playing time could also change depending on a system. Hypothetically, if Gus Malzahn had left Auburn during Nick Marshall’s tenure, and his replacement ran a pro style offense then Marshall’s qb career would have likely ended. Could he start as a db? Probably, but you get the idea.
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Is he playing QB now?
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Are you trying to to prove my point or was that inadvertent?
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I seriously have no idea if he caught on as a DB, I know he is not in the league as a QB…
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I think he’s more of a spec teams guy
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Marshall is not a good example since he was a transfer thief but I understand your point. The same could be said about Mo although he was seeing playing time at Bama, his transfer had nothing to do with his coach changing jobs. If a player is true future NFL quality, he will be playing, you can count on that.
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True, but most players aren’t true future NFL quality. I was using Marshall as a hypothetical but, I’m pretty the only reason Smith came to Georgia was bc Smart left Bama for Athens. Either way kids get screwed by coaching changes. Also, see Jacob Park who wasn’t deemed better than Greyson Lambert, but has become the starter at Iowa State.
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Didn’t Park leave before Lambert decided to come? IIRC, that’s why there was an urgent need to get a grad transfer qb. There were only two scholarship qb’s on the roster, and the coaches wanted someone who would be immediately eligible.
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OK, so he was deemed to be worse than Brice Ramsey. Which further proves my point that a coaching change Hurt park
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I didn’t say players should be totally prohibited from leaving. There will always be situations where a kid decides he doesn’t like where he is for whatever reason. There are transfer rules in place now that address that.
My point is; kids should not fall in love with a particular coach and have that coach as their primary reason for picking a school. The kid should want to go to the school first and foremost. Liking a coach should be the icing on the cake.
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I used to like Tony, now he just seems like a mouthpiece for protecting the things I hate about college football.
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Management says Leave Tony Alone!
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