College Football Recruiting 101: The "Offer" Game, How It All Works

Last July, I released an article a recruiting article, Stars Mean Everything and Nothing at All. This time around, we will take a look at what the "offer" means and how it should be viewed in current college football recruiting.

For many college football fans, the recruiting game is a brand new world. Obviously recruiting is the lifeblood of your program, but many fans didn't really follow it year-round. They just wait to see the product on the field and don't know any better.

The last few years though, recruiting has absolutely taken off, and the importance and the interest has grown immensely.

So as someone who has followed recruiting closely for awhile now, I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of a trend going on in college football recruiting, and it centers around the "offer".

Someone asked me the other day, "what the heck is the point of offering a kid a scholarship if he can't accept it or commit to it?"

What he's referring to are offers given to kids, that are clarified to be offers that aren't committable. Meaning if the player tried to commit to the offer, he'd probably be turned down or told to wait.

So the question stands, why make an offer to a kid if you won't accept his commitment?

Here's why.

Most "offers" to kids at this stage, are bogus offers. Sure many are the real deal, but there are that many more that are nothing more than a way for your school to stay in the game with a prospect without losing ground on him to other schools. When in reality, the offer isn't a committable one, though it could be down the road.

These "offers" mostly consist of certain verbiage such as, "we are offering you a scholarship depending on three main goals being met: keeping your grades up, continuing to get better on the field, and staying out of trouble off the field."

That way the school has "offered" the prospect, but they have given themselves wiggle room if the prospect wanted to commit right then, saying the offer is based on certain things that must be met first.

Nowadays, offers go out before evaluations are even made on many of these kids. If not, then you won't sign many of these prospects. So if you "offer" a player before making an evaluation, you can see why the so-called offers aren't exactly iron clad.

One example is when Chan Gailey came into the college game at Georgia Tech from the NFL. In the NFL, you better be very sure about a player before you draft him, or you will be fired. Well Gailey brought that same approach to college and tried to make sure about a kid before they offered a scholarship.

Problem with that is by the time a full evaluation is done on a player, if you haven't offered him, other schools have and you don't have a chance to sign him.

Basically the "offers" are a way to keep the school in the thick of the race for the kid, but if he tried to commit at that time, he would be turned down. That's the way the game is being played now.

Tennessee and Alabama for example have offered close to 150 kids a scholarship this year so far. Keep in mind you can only bring in 25 players a year, so offering 150 seems outrageous.

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