Recruiting field not always even

Just because schools compete in the same conference doesn’t mean they recruit from the same athlete pool.

Consider ACC men’s basketball.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of public university admissions standards showed Georgia Tech players had a conference-best average high school GPA of 3.0. Florida State’s had a conference-worst 2.56. Tech players’ average SAT of 948 ranked third in the ACC but was still 78 points ahead of Florida State’s league-worst 870.

Unfair? No, says Paul Hewitt, Georgia Tech’s coach.

“We don’t have a problem recruiting against our competition. I learned a long time ago not to begrudge anybody their situation,” he said, adding that each university needs to stay true to its mission and that he buys into Georgia Tech’s.

Georgia football players averaged 59 SAT points higher than their SEC rivals at Florida. Georgia’s football SAT scores ranked second among the SEC’s public schools, behind only Kentucky’s.

In SEC men’s basketball, though, only Mississippi State’s 832 average SAT ranked below Georgia’s 845. (Georgia’s scores are from the freshman classes of 1997-99, which means they cover players recruited by former coach Ron Jirsa.)

The universities reported only average SAT scores, not player-by-player numbers, so the figures don’t show exactly how low a score a school was willing to accept.

Schools don’t make their minimum requirements public, in part because specific minimums don’t always exist. Instead, admissions decisions occur case by case, using high school GPA, standardized test scores and other, non-numerical factors, such as recommendations from teachers and counselors.

At Georgia, a faculty committee reviews the applications of those recruits who would not be admitted if not for their athletic talent. About 10 to 15 percent of all Bulldogs athletes get admitted through that process, said Nancy McDuff, the university’s associate vice president for admissions and enrollment management.

That committee refers borderline decisions to the president. About 10 percent of athletes get into school that way, McDuff said.

Sometimes, rejections become public knowledge.

Receiver Jamar Bryant twice signed with Georgia but couldn’t get in even after attending Hargrave Military Academy after high school. He went on to lead East Carolina University in receiving last season. Linebacker Jamar Chaney, denied admission to Georgia after questions were raised about his standardized test score, led Mississippi State University in tackles in 2007.

‘Bypass them and go on’

Most of the time, though, the public never learns the role academic standards play in recruiting.

“There are a lot of kids, kids that sign scholarships at other schools we play in and out of our conference that we couldn’t get in our school here,” Georgia Tech assistant football coach Jeff Monken said. “We just have to bypass them and go on. That may mean we recruit them for a while and say, ‘Let’s hope he gets his grades.’ We get to December, and he gets his first-semester senior grades and we’ve got to let him go.

“I’m sure there are times we’ll get criticized, ‘You guys have been recruiting this kid all along, and then you just dropped him,’ or ‘You recruited this guy all along, and the other school signed him.’ We’re not going to embarrass the kid and say, well actually, he couldn’t get into school.”

Recruiting publications generally don’t take academic qualifications into account when ranking a school’s signing class. Rivals.com did make one adjustment; in addition to its signing day rankings, it now does a second ranking after it knows which players enrolled and which never made it to school. But whether a player is an honors student or barely meets the NCAA academic eligibility minimums doesn’t affect his school’s spot in the rankings.

“The only time a player’s academic standing comes into question with us is when he can’t get into any Division I school,” said Bobby Burton, editor of Rivals.com. “You can’t sit there and know the ins and outs of every single player’s academic situation.”