High School Coaches Standing Up to the Giants of College Football
When big money and power meet grassroots, it isn't necessarily as one-sided a fight as you might think. During the college football recruiting season, we saw some coaches reneging on their promises to high school kids and others leaving their schools for other jobs roughly 30 seconds after kids signed binding commitments to play for them.
We saw high school coaches getting all uppity about it on behalf of their kids. But what can your neighborhood high school coach do when your kids are screwed over by coaches such as Urban Meyer, Jim Mora and Bobby Petrino?
Actually, plenty. And what we saw this recruiting season was high school coaches deciding to hit back. Grassroots packs a punch.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
"As a coach, you have to have relationships that will detour those types of things from happening [to high school players] at your school," said Thomas Wilcher, coach at Cass Tech in Detroit. "If it happens, you have to take a stand, because if you do not, it will happen. It will happen.
"And if it doesn't happen at my school, it will happen at other schools. When the other schools, the whole city [gets together], that's when it can hurt colleges. When we have our organizational meetings, you speak up and say, 'Don't deal with this school.' It becomes a black hat against a university."
In at least two very public cases, coaches took this approach, threatening big-name coaches that they might not be welcome next year in recruiting kids at their school. But the power comes when these coaches spread that threat to nearby schools, an entire city.
Running back Matt Colburn of Dutch Fork High near Columbia, South Carolina, accepted Louisville coach Bobby Petrino's scholarship offer in June and cut off all other college recruiters. Then, on the week of national signing day, Petrino had an assistant call Colburn and tell him there would be no scholarship now, but he could enroll in January 2016.
Colburn's high school coach, Tom Knotts, said at the time that Petrino "won't be able to recruit my school anymore, and I imagine there will be some other coaches that will say the same thing," per Phil Kornblut of GoUpstate.com.
But what good does it do keeping college coaches away from future recruits? Doesn't that just reduce the number of opportunities for kids?
"It doesn't take away opportunities for players; it gives players a better opportunity," Wilcher said. "You want them to go somewhere where they have your interest at heart. It's not the interest of a football player, but the interest of a child.
"Football is just a road we walk down that leads us to opportunities. I just want college coaches to understand this is a child first, a student first. So you cannot allow those types of relationships to fester in your area, fester in your school, fester in your league."
We always hear about today's athletes feeling entitled. But what about the coaches and power structure of the sports themselves?
Wilcher took issue with Ohio State's treatment of his highly regarded running back, Mike Weber, who was choosing between Michigan and Ohio State. Weber signed to play for the Buckeyes, only to find out the next day that Ohio State running backs coach Stan Drayton was leaving to be an assistant for the Chicago Bears. Drayton was involved in recruiting Weber but never said he might be leaving.
Wilcher spoke publicly. According to Angelique S. Chengelis and Tony Paul of The Detroit News, he told 105.1 WMGC-FM in Detroit, "I think Urban Meyer will have to step his game up; we're going to have to talk. He has come to my school and got the No. 1 athlete two years in a row.
"You cannot come over here, come up north and walk out of here with your pockets full and not give us respect."
This is just another example of how the rules are not set up to help the kids but rather the power schools. Weber had signed his letter and could not get out of it.
And how did they resolve it? Meyer felt it important enough to call Wilcher and talk it out: "We talked about relationships, we talked about responsibilities, we talked about expectations," Wilcher said. He was satisfied and said he now believes that Meyer does have kids' best interest at heart.
There is a weird dynamic between high school coaches and big-time superstar college coaches. Both sides are holding the other's golden ticket.
"It's like a marriage almost," Wilcher said. "Both people have to get along with one another to survive. It should be a win-win."
At UNLV, new coach Tony Sanchez is going from one side of that relationship to the other. He was a longtime high school coach.
"I've been on the other side of the table my whole career," he said. "[College] teams throw out crazy offers, and some are sincere, and some are not. Would I do what Coach Petrino did? No, I wouldn't. We've got to be men of our word."
If he's not, he'll learn about the bottom-up power of grassroots. Soon, the message will get to coaches behaving badly.
Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
