An early signing period may be coming to college football. In fact, in a recent American Football Coaches Association poll, 73% of coaches favored an AFCA recommendation for an early signing period. Signing Day would then shift from February to December. The AFCA sent those findings to coaches, and Pete Carroll flipped.Carroll is especially upset - he faxed back his response with "this is a terrible change!!" scrawled across the bottomExclamation point exclamation point (!!). Nice.
I'm with Carroll on this one, the proposal would be ridiculously unfair to the athletes. It also likely furthers Carroll's opinion that other coaches are "lazy". Coaches are still being hired and fired after December, the season's not over, and not all players have been able to make recruiting visits or would rather make them once the high school and college football seasons have ended.
There's no reason to lock players into commitments especially when recruiting is a two-way, usually lengthy information gathering process. The greater amount of time given to it, the more all parties are able to gather about the other and make the best possible decision.
This is bad policy.
I've got a forum here at FanHouse to make my opinion known, but I admire Carroll's less nuanced Fax Machine Diplomacy. Maybe he's onto something.

































Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-10-2008 @ 7:30PM
JIm said...
I for one time do agree 100% with Pete Carroll on this. He is correct on this. Also yu don't know if the player will be able to attend college that early. look at the ones tha tdidn't get in this year.
A Alabama fan....
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8-11-2008 @ 3:49PM
cacarr said...
Pete Carroll is indeed correct on this, though I'm not sure why he would be taking this position. In fact, it ought to increase the advantages that schools in large markets like LA have relative to schools in smaller markets -- such as a school like the the University of Oregon, in Eugene.
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8-23-2008 @ 2:00AM
mickey shapiro said...
I think Pete really has the best interest of the kids at heart. There is so much pressure on young athletes that putting more on them is just not fair. Enough is enough!!
8-20-2008 @ 11:51PM
Eric said...
I think the biggest news is some people still use Fax machines.
Reply
8-24-2008 @ 4:21PM
Gregory E Wright said...
Saban is also pissed. Saban and Caroll are the only hard working coaches in the NCAA
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