Coaches rethink December signings

FAYETTEVILLE — While patience is often a virtue, sometimes bad ideas should be nipped in the bud lest they sprout like kudzu to be worse.

A case in point is this now completed three day early signing period for graduating high school senior football players rather than waiting for the traditional opening of the signing period on the first Wednesday in February, which is still in effect.

College football coaches, including newly hired Arkansas Razorbacks coach Chad Morris, wished this early signing period into effect. Now many, including Morris, recite the adage of be careful what you wish for, for it might come true.

As a Dec. 6 Arkansas hire faced with a Dec. 20–22 early signing period, Morris obviously came to dislike what he so lobbied for while head coaching SMU.

“I’ve really changed my opinion over the last 13 days to be exact,” Morris said Dec. 20 after signing seven players, the fewest of any SEC school starting the signing period. “I’m not in favor of it. It’s been a wild ride, to say the least, over

13 days. When you walk in to a young man’s house and you’re trying to build a relationship that maybe could have been

2 1/2 months or two months of building from December probably through January to get to February signing day, now all of a sudden, you walk in and you try to build that relationship, or a two-year relationship if we’d have been established longer, in 20 minutes or an hour.”

Turns out he wouldn’t have liked it still coaching SMU. The Mustangs played Louisiana Tech in the Dec. 20 Frisco Bowl in Frisco, Texas, on the same date as the opening of the early-signing period.

So some coaches coached at early bowl games, while others in the later bowls or no bowls at all could recruit full blast.

“You’ve got teams that have been at bowl sites for almost four or five days that are at a distinct disadvantage,” Morris said.

Finally, it has dawned on coaches, Morris included, that athletes busy completing their fall semester final exams and readying for the Christmas holidays might not feel as comfortable with this late

December recruiting push as they would just relaxing during the Christmas through January bowl games recruiting dead period until recruiting renews.

“Don’t forget this young man has final exams, he’s studying for finals or he’s in finals,” Morris said. “He’s taking reviews. He’s got to study that night. He’s got different things going on, and yet we’re trying to get in to see the family and … so it’s been quite the challenge. I’m not in favor of it.”

In this columnist’s view, the most insidious aspect of this early signing period is the pressure that many coaches will exert on high school seniors to graduate at midterm in December.

There will be a push then to enroll at their college in January and participate in offseason winter conditioning and spring practice rather than spend that high school senior spring semester that so many wouldn’t trade as often that final relatively carefree period of our lives before college, vocations or the military beckons.

It’s a memory estimate rather than scientific count, but having covered the Razorbacks since 1973, the number of January enrolled UA football freshmen who got homesick and left school or who never played until they were sophomores or older sure seems far to outnumber those who vaulted from spring ball into varsity roles that next ensuing fall.

Morris was asked nationally how many December signees he anticipates enrolling at their colleges in January for the spring semester.

“I would have to look at that after the signing period is all done and see those that signed and those that enrolled,” Morris said on Dec. 20. “From what I’m gathering, those that sign today (through Dec. 22 when the Razorbacks would add their eighth and final December signee) I bet you’re probably looking at 80 percent of the kids that sign are pretty much going to land a spot somewhere in January at the place they signed.”

Arkansas’ average won’t be that high. Only two of the eight freshman signees are known to be December graduates set to enroll at the UA in January rather than reporting after they graduate in May. Those two may prosper.

Some do. But traditionally that’s been more the December grad’s option signing a grant-in-aid rather than compelling athletes to graduate early.

The tradition of waiting to February seems best for the athlete and even the best, many coaches now admit, for the the coaches, too.