A signing free-for-all
Decades ago, recruits could commit to several schools in order to relieve some of the pressure
Wednesday’s early national letter of intent signing period for high school football players will be a throwback of sorts to the 1960s and ’70s, when players, coaches and fans had to sweat and fret their way through two rounds of signing deadlines. • This week’s process, however, will have one significant difference from the two-step drama that players from Earl Campbell to Billy Sims to Eric Dickerson to Mike Singletary faced 40-plus years ago. • In those days, players could sign multiple conference letters of intent and, a week to a month later, a national letter to determine their final college choice. This year, players can choose to sign in December or February, but they will sign just one national letter. • So while the new system may result in some stories to remember, they will assume a different spin than the tale of Charles Alexander, a star running back at Galveston Ball who, as conference signing day approached in February 1975, was overwhelmed by indecision.
“You can imagine all the schools that were sending letters and calling my house,” Alexander said. “I got so nervous that it gave me a rash. I went to the doctor, and he said it would go away once I made a decision.”
And so, to relieve the pressure and end the phone calls — most of them, at least — Alexander signed a conference letter with Baylor.
And the University of Houston. And LSU. That didn’t end the drama — Alexander’s guardian refused to co-sign the Baylor letter, so it was down to Houston and LSU — but it helped.
“It was the only way I could get some peace and get rid of all the other schools that were calling me, to narrow it down to two schools,” Alexander said.
R.C. Slocum, who got his start as an assistant coach at Texas A&M in the early 1970s before becoming a head coach a decade later, said Alexander’s indecision was par for the course for many top players.
”Most all of the good ones were that way. They would sign with multiple leagues — ‘If I go to the Southwest Conference, I’ll go with A&M, and if I go to the Big Eight, I’ll go with Oklahoma,’ ” Slocum said. “That’s the way they did it.”
Grant Teaff, Baylor’s longtime coach and now the retired executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, lost out for Alexander, but he also won his share of the twostep signing struggles.
Still, he wasn’t a fan of the old recruiting rules.
“We would all scramble in the Southwest Conference and get the players we wanted, and then there were certain schools from across the northern border that would then come in, and we would have to battle the whole thing all over again,” Teaff said.
North of the border, of course, was Teaff’s way of referring to the University of Oklahoma, which under coach Barry Switzer and recruiting coordinator Jerry Pettibone made a living off Texas players for years.
“(Conference signing days) helped narrow things down,” said Pettibone, who after his coaching career went on to work for a nonprofit group in Norman called Sooners Helping Sooners.
“You knew who the main competition was — Texas or Arkansas or Texas A&M — and then you could say, ‘This is who we have to beat’ to sign that player.”
Even with multiple conference options, Pettibone said surprisingly few players changed their recruiting commitments in the 1970s, in part because NCAA rules allowed more frequent contacts between coaches and players and, thus, more opportunities for coaches to ingratiate themselves with a player and his family. Pulling double duty
Slocum, for example, made innumerable trips to Kirbyville in 1972 to ensure that running back Bubba Bean would stick with his commitment to the Aggies.
“The national letter deadline was in April, so I would have to work during spring football and then drive to Kirbyville for a courtesy visit with Bubba,” Slocum said. “Other people were still recruiting him, and they were hammering the heck of out of A&M.
“It was not a good deal. Schools would take our list and see that we had signed three running backs on the conference signing day, and they would say, ‘Let’s go get one of them.’ ”
Bean, who became a four-year starter at A&M and played in the NFL, said Slocum had reason for concern. He became enamored of Colorado, visiting Boulder when snow was on the ground, a rarity in Central Texas, and connecting with Houston native Cliff Branch, who starred at Colorado before becoming an NFL star with the Raiders.
“You thought you had made the right decision, but other coaches would keep coming around, and it got confusing, especially for someone like me who was raised out in the country,” said Bean, who now works as a neighborhood outreach coordinator for the city of Bryan.
“But R.C. got my mom and dad on board early. They would make it a point that when he would visit, I would need to spend time with him.”
Still, there were switches of note from conference to national signing day, although many involved players who failed to make a substantial impact in college football.
One exception to that trend was Billy Waddy of Boling, a top high school quarterback in the 1970s, who signed a SWC letter in the same class that included allstate quarterback Tommy Kramer. A few weeks later, though, Waddy signed with Colorado, where he played wide receiver and eventually made it to the NFL.
Defensive back Ronald Burns of Arlington Houston signed with Oklahoma but ended up at Baylor, where he won all-conference honors, and future all-SWC offensive lineman Maceo Fifer of Kerrville signed on with West Texas State before making a final choice to attend the University of Houston. Victor Hicks, a future star at Oklahoma, signed with hometown Texas Tech before deciding to head north of the Red River.
Even Oklahoma lost out on a player or two. Pettibone signed Plano defensive back Pat Thomas to a Big Eight letter, but then Thomas began lobbying the Sooners to sign his cousin, Jackie Williams, as well.
“Pat kept telling me, ‘You know, Jackie wants to come to OU, too,’ and I would say, ‘Pat, you just stick with us,’” Pettibone said. “Long story short, A&M got them both. Pat Thomas was an All-American, and Jackie Williams was an all-conference safety. That had me questioning my evaluation skills.” Leaving a paper trail
Unlike current rules, coaches during the 1970s and ’80s could visit a player’s home on signing day. Teaff said that could make for some interesting early-morning drama on signing day.
“We got to one player’s home at 8 a.m. on signing day, which was the legal time we could get there,” Teaff said. “We got inside first, and OU was pulling up outside the house while we were inside signing the player.
“While they were getting out of the car, I walked out the front door, waved the piece of paper (signed by the recruit) at them and drove off. But on another occasion, I showed up at the player’s house at the appointed time, and another school had him strategically located somewhere else. And then they came out of the house after getting the parents to sign, waving that piece of paper at me.”
Alexander also had suitors at his door when he left his home on national signing day.
“UH was at my back door, and LSU was at my front door,” he said, laughing. “In my mind, I didn’t think I would have to make up my mind until I got to school. But when I walked out the door, I said, ‘OK, so much for that game plan.’
“I knew I had to make up my mind in the next 15 seconds, and it hit me real hard that I should go to LSU. I walked over to (UH coach) Bill Yeoman and thanked him for recruiting me, and then I jumped in the car with (LSU assistant) Jerry Stovall.
“And it turned out OK. I haven’t made a lot of good decisions in life, but that was one of them.”
Alexander, after his grand moment of indecision in 1975, went on to set nine Southeastern Conference records at LSU, twice finishing in the top 10 in the Heisman Trophy balloting. He played seven years in the NFL and was selected in 2012 to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Slocum and Teaff were glad to see the end of early conference signing days in 1981, but Teaff isn’t a fan of the new December signing period because it interferes, he said, with players’ ability to concentrate on the high school playoffs in Texas.
But Alexander, who owns a food service company in Houston called C’Mon Man Cajun Seasonings, likes the new rule that allows high school seniors to sign in December.
“If I were a kid, I would want it to be over with soon. That’s a lot of pressure for a 17-year-old,” he said. david.barron@chron.com twitter.com/dfbarron