Welcome to a Getaway Day edition of the Friday Feedback. A vacation begins Monday — hardly any travel, so I need not worry about my wallet this time — but I don’t think I’ll be stepping too far away from the laptop. It will be kind of sparse here until I return the 30th, but I might pop in if I see the bat symbol. I have an idea for Monday, maybe Tuesday and perhaps even Friday. And who knows, maybe there’s a guest host here or there. No promises. Only vague innuendo.
Before we begin today, a word about recruiting:
Eh.
I find I have a lot of respect for the folks who chase these stories for a living. Just through my far less passionate fiddling with that instrument, I find it a frustrating thing to do.
And still yet, I find it oddly compelling to follow.
Maybe it’s just me and a jaded view or a strained look for a different angle, but it seems like it’s a rapidly evolving soap opera these days. To that, it’s become … oh boy … almost enjoyable. Hardly ever is a story now merely about how Player A commits to School X. There are layers under the surface. One side’s playing another. He uses them. They woo him. There are angels and demons. Rules are made and broken. People are up to good and no good.
And then there’s us, here to digest and opine as we see it and frequently those things becomes angles and stories worth pursuing. I think it’s the second wave. The Rivals and Scout and associated sites were the first and made it a business. Newspapers tried to follow, only now it’s hard because staffs are so much smaller and more specialized to focus on bigger beats. (The same is said for those recruiting sites and how they don’t devote as much to the games and results and features as do newspapers.)
The larger papers can have a recruiting beat, but those are an endangered species today. What we do have, though, is an edge in numbers and circulation over the Web sites so the news has to be delivered, if even a day or a few days late. You then have to make people care. So you dig and unearth an angle and even if the target has already heard about a commitment or a signing, it’s at least presented in a way to make one give a darn about old news. More and more now it’s about pulling back the curtain on recruiting.
What’s next? Personally, I’d love to see a kid take it into his/her own hands and devote a Twitter page to the entire recruiting process. I believe we’ll then see the introduction of “tertiary recruiting violations.” Giddyup.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In lieu of a joke, how about a shameless plug. Let’s pick the 15-v.-2 upset.
Mack said:
I’ve had this idea for a while (but never spent the time to fully develop it because I don’t get paid to do so) … but the best way to do this is to promote/relegate to/from BCS conferences.
Therefore, the winners of the Mountain West, CUSA, and Sun Belt move up and the losers of the BCS conferences move down. Like anything else, this would be good for the sport, but politics (and Vanderbilt/Syracusa/Northwestern/Stanford) would keep it from happening. This would virtually abolish all of the academic institutions in D-1 and promote the state schools with no standards.
I get paid to do so and I really wish I’d given it more time. Who knows, maybe I do so again in the future. I think in some form it’d work and rejuvenate the game. There are so many nightmarish logistical obstacles, though. I really did like the submitted idea from the original post as well as this one and mine, but how can you restructure conferences and the finances every year or every few years? It’d require a dramastic — dramatic AND drastic … it’d be that big — change in philosophy or you’d have a total apocalypse. That said, I think it can happen.
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