Colleges continue to recruit committed players

It's the college football equivalent of flirting with a neighbor's wife.

It can get nasty, heated and appear downright unethical at times, but the recruitment of players who have already committed to different school is now common practice by head coaches around the country, and it's here to stay.

"It's a measure of grandstanding, but I think the reality is that they're all doing it, and they all know that they almost have to do it," said ESPN recruiting expert Bruce Feldman, who recently published his book, "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting."

The issue took center stage locally in 2005 when the No. 9-ranked quarterback in the country, Josh Freeman, was lured away from a commitment he made to Nebraska by former Kansas State head coach Ron Prince.

Freeman switched his allegiance in December, two months before National Signing Day, but he had been committed to NU since June of that year.

It looked like déjà vu all over again for the Cornhuskers two weeks ago when it was revealed that NU commit Andrew Green was accepting an offer to visit Oklahoma shortly after the Sooners' appearance in the National Championship Game.

Green has been committed to NU since the middle of December and is expected to sign his letter of intent to play for Nebraska on Wednesday. But OU coach Bob Stoops reportedly wanted to meet with the cornerback to fill in the gaps in his recruiting class after a couple of recruits decided to play elsewhere.

And around we go.

"There's a lot of spinning going on, and sometimes, the kid doesn't know what to believe," Feldman said. "It's just very murky. The kid is playing the game and putting out his share of misinformation, and the coaches are putting out their share of misinformation. And people are getting in and out of who they're committed to on both sides of it. So it really is a weird little dance that's going on."

As of now, there is no NCAA rule that specifically prohibits a coach from contacting a player who has committed to a different program. Feldman said he couldn't think of any coaches who refuse to recruit players who have already committed and added that everyone from Florida's Urban Meyer to Penn State's Joe Paterno is doing it.

"It's hard to legislate some kind of moral clause for coaches because there are already so many rules out there," Feldman said. "A lot of them are really shaky rules to begin with. I mean, there are little loopholes that people get around. There's gray areas that people operate in, so it would just be one more gray area."

The process often leads to what is called "negative recruiting" – a coach basically telling a high school student how bad the program he has committed to is, hoping to get the player to jump ship.

"Coaches say, ‘Well, we don't negative recruit. We just tell the kid everything he needs to know, or tell it like it is or tell him about our place,'" Feldman said. "Well, in the process of telling him how great their situation is, I know it's usually a backhanded shot at the rival school who that kid may be looking at."

To illustrate his point, Feldman told the story of a pitch made by a recruiter from a "pretty prominent school" to an already committed player. The recruiter told the prospect he was going to throw two numbers at him: 9 and 60. He asked the recruit if he knew what those numbers were, and the student said no.

"Well, nine, and I'm changing the numbers up a little bit," Feldman said. "‘Nine is where we were ranked in the country in rushing, and 60 is where they were.' And all of the sudden, (the recruit is) like ‘Wow, I didn't know that,' and then he de-commits. He switches, and that's a successful pitch."

Former Husker running back Marlon Lucky, who just finished his senior year and is now preparing for the NFL Scouting Combine, once had an up-close-and-personal look at the tactics of these would-be recruit thieves while he was a prominent high school prospect.

Lucky was a five-star-rated running back in 2004 when he committed to play for Nebraska, but that didn't dissuade USC recruiters from trying to get the talented running back into a Trojan uniform.

"They just kept recruiting me," Lucky said. "They were going to my games, and they just told me that I would have a good opportunity to play. They basically said the stuff that a lot of schools will tell you after you commit to another school. But that was their job, to just keep ..."

Lucky paused, searching for the right word.

"To just keep feeding, basically."

Nebraska has been more than the victim of this kind of practice. The Huskers made an offer last weekend to junior-college defensive tackle Myles Wade, currently a Texas Tech commit.

One of the major problems leading to this type of feeding frenzy is a coach's interpretation of a player's commitment level, Feldman said. What a little hesitance does for coaches is a lot like what blood in the water does for a shark.

"The recruiting business has just boomed with it," Feldman said of coaches recruiting committed players. "You'll hear kids say, ‘Yeah, I'm 80 percent committed or 60 percent committed,' so (the coaches) know that, and they think the kid says that's how the game is being played. And the coaches are kind of reacting in kind and doing the same thing."

Indeed, many of the young men out there who are vulnerable to these recruiting "attacks" from coaches are simply asking for it, according to Feldman. The ESPN senior writer said that the No. 1 quarterback prospect in this year's class, Matt Barkley, said he has hardly dealt with any harassment from other programs after he committed to USC more than year ago.