LSU’s Les Miles (AP)
I asked UGA's Mark Richt last week about this: What happened to all the fuss from college coaches about kids signing early financial-aid agreements (FAA) with multiple schools?
It one of the recruiting’s hottest topics back in 2014 for reasons I’ll mention later, but you barely heard a peep about it this past year.
“Yeah, you didn’t hear much about that, and I don’t know if it will become a big issue again or not,” Richt said.
“I think part of what slowed it down a little bit this year (was the NCAA’s warning last April) — that if a kid signs with four schools, he can only go to one; and then other three are supposedly on the hook for some kind of violation because the kid didn’t go there.”
Mark Richt (AJC file)
Richt didn't know what the NCAA's penalty could be for that type of situation. And I wondered if there would even be a true punishment after the NCAA failed to address specific penalties in its press release last April. Because the NCAA was so unclear, it sort of left everybody guessing.
Well, there’s no more guessing after Thursday.
On Thursday, LSU got hammered after a 2015 recruit signed a FAA with the Tigers but ultimately decided to elsewhere.
The SEC (not the NCAA) banned LSU for two years from signing kids that enroll early to a FAA, along with stripping the Tigers of 10 percent of their evaluation days in 2015 (21 of 210 days), per TheAdvocate.com's Ross Dellenger.
In my opinion, it’s a harsh penalty for a confusing rule that is applied retroactively.
In an effort to make this easier to understand, let’s start from the beginning: The two most important documents that recruits sign with colleges are the national letter of intent or NLI (which binds the kid to the college) and the FAA (which binds the college to the kid).
In October 2013, a new NCAA interpretation allowed recruits who were approved to enroll early in college to sign a FAA beginning on Aug. 1 of their senior year of high school.
Why was that a big deal to colleges? Because it allowed the colleges to basically have “unlimited contact,” including text messages and in-person contact, with the prospect until they enrolled early or signed an NLI. It also allowed the college coaches to speak publicly on the prospect.
Why would a recruit want to sign a FAA? What’s the benefit? Because the agreement obligated the university to honor the recruit’s scholarship.
Things really got confusing in 2013 when several elite prospects, including receiver Josh Malone, signed a FAA with multiple colleges. Malone signed with Tennessee, UGA, Clemson and Florida State – and the head coaches of all four schools each spoke publicly about Malone in press conferences before he started classes with the Volunteers in January 2014.
Some college coaches felt like this was going to turn into a circus, while other coaches privately worried about being able to maintain the pace of “unlimited contact” vs. the competition.
Last April, the NCAA issued a new interpretation: If a senior signed more than one financial aid agreement, only the first college he signed with would have the benefits of unlimited contact and publicity.
Initially, that sounded like a good idea to address concerns but – as we pointed out at the time – it also created more problems than it solved. Unlike the NLI program, which is supervised by the NCAA, the FAA is shared only between the recruit and the respective college. For example, Tennessee will not disclose to UGA, Clemson and Florida State if a future Josh Malone (a) has signed a financial aid agreement with Tennessee or (b) the date of signed agreement.
I could go on, but it’s clearly a big mess.
Thursday’s harsh penalties against LSU will surely make many colleges hesitate before handing out the FAA to 2016 recruits.
What’s your opinion? Please post below.
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