SEC football coaches say the new early-signing period is misguided.
DESTIN — To succeed in the Southeastern Conference, a school needs players.
To get them, a school needs high school coaches.
Will Muschamp thinks college football decision-makers have lost sight of this, based on the decision to add an early-signing period.
“My brother is a high school coach,” Muschamp said at the annual SEC spring meetings. “I have not met one high school coach that is for this legislation. I don’t know if they were even consulted. That is an important component because I believe with what commissioner [Greg] Sankey says that it’s not just about college football, it’s about the game of football.
“The worst thing we can do is cut off the feeder programs that we have in the high school programs that are sending players to college.”
Muschamp believes the game of football is going to suffer unintended consequences because of the new rule change.
A 72-hour window from Dec. 20-22 will allow high school players to sign a national letter of intent and end their recruitment six weeks early.
A player who always has wanted to be a Florida Gator can do so without waiting until National Signing Day on the first Wednesday of February.
“We’re prepared to sign the ones we made offers to, if they choose to all jump in the boat on Dec. 20,” Gators coach Jim McElwain said. “I don’t know
that that’s going to happen yet. I think that’s going to be a couple of years before it really settles in.”
As the college game adjusts, the growing pains will afflict the high school coaching ranks.
Beginning next April, recruits will be allowed to take official visits in April, May and June of their junior years.
This will be near the end of a player’s sixth semester in high school when it is still unclear whether he will be academically eligible. While focusing on classes and studies, a player will be paring down his list of college choices.
“You’ve got a young man taking a visit on a college campus during the week and he hasn’t finished six semesters of high school so academically where exactly is he,” Muschamp said. “I don’t think it’s very smart.”
High school players who want to sign early also would have official visits scheduled around playoff games. Players in Texas and California still could be playing up until Dec. 20-22.
“I’m really concerned about the impact on the high school,” UF athletic director Scott Stricklin said. “You look at playoff games are going to be going on, state championship games are going to be going on at a time we are trying to get kids on our campus for official visits.”
The SEC has thrived under the current recruiting window, no school more than Alabama.
According to 247Sports, the Crimson Tide have finished No. 1 in the team rankings every year since 2012. But in 2017, six of the top 12 schools were from the SEC, including the Gators, at No. 11.
“A lot of the things that happen in college football — this is no disrespect to anyone — is there’s a lot of paranoia that someone else has an advantage on someone else, whether it’s a conference, whether it’s one team versus another, whether it’s one conference versus another,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.
Some SEC coaches see benefits to the new rule.
Arkansas coach Bret Bielema believes 75 to 90 percent of his class will sign in December.
“If I was a parent of a kid now, I would say, ‘Hey, I’m signing in December,’ ” he said.
Sankey said the general resistance from many of his coaches reveals a “disconnect” with the Football Oversight Committee, though he is confident the SEC will adjust.
“At the end of the day, tell me the rules and we’re going to be successful,” he said.
For now, the general sentiment among SEC coaches is confusion.
“I think there’s just a lot of questions,” Kentucky’s Mark Stoops said.
Stricklin said the more answers he finds, the less he favors the change.
“I used to be a proponent of early signing and the more you dig into the potential unintended consequences of doing what we’ve done, I think where we had it in February was probably there for a reason,” he said. “It made a lot of sense.”