Fawned-Over Recruits a Discomfiting Spectacle

There are very few things related to sports that make me feel uncomfortable. I don’t mind coaches yelling at players – they generally have their best interests at heart. I don’t mind the always lingering stigma of performance-enhancing drugs – it’s an unwinnable battle.

You can name dozens more – the NCAA making boatloads of cash off amateur athletes, coaches bailing on their players for better jobs, and on and on. I’m not saying I agree with all of these practices, just that they don’t make me feel genuinely uncomfortable.

National Signing Day is different.

Wednesday was the first day high school football players could send in their Letters of Intent to attend a college – and obviously play football there. These are binding documents players send to the university, which they can only be released from by the coaching staff. It has turned into a very big event in the sports landscape, on par with the NFL Draft.

The explosion of online recruiting websites – rivals.com, scout.com, etc. – pushed it into the general media and made it much more than just a casual acknowledgement of who would be attending a fan’s favorite school next season. ESPNU and CBS College Sports now televise all day coverage of what is essentially kids faxing (yes, they still use faxes) documents to a college.

UConn brought in 16 recruits – a lightly regarded class by all the recruiting services. It was ranked last in the Big East by rivals.com.

There is no question the day is important. Recruiting is the lifeblood of all college sports. If a golden retriever could recruit 5-star players, I’m convinced SEC schools would be lined up to offer it $5 million coaching contracts. No coach can win without talented players.

But does Signing Day have to be so disgustingly exploitative? It makes me uncomfortable to be torn between knowing that these players are going to determine the future success of my alma mater's sports program, while also knowing they are 18-year-old kids who are so overtly flattered and drooled over they come into college with an ego that will drive many of them to utter disaster.

Buried in the news cycle of kids picking out which hat to wear yesterday was a blurb on Mitch Mustain. Mustain was the No. 10 recruit in scout.com’s class of 2006 – the top quarterback. He was ranked one spot higher than future No. 1 NFL Draft pick Matthew Stafford and 19 spots higher than Tim Tebow. Mustain was arrested late Tuesday night on a felony narcotics charge for allegedly selling prescription drugs in part of a sting operation by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The Mustain story is a prototypical look at the ugly side of NCAA recruiting. He committed to Arkansas out of high school, his home state university. The commitment was tied to the hiring of his former head coach, Gus Malzahn – who just won a national championship as the offensive coordinator at Auburn.

The story is about as convoluted as they come, but Mustain ended up transferring to USC, Malzahn went to Tulsa (and then Auburn) and Arkansas coach Houston Nutt went to Ole Miss. Mustain started just one game at USC after being pushed out of the way by Matt Barkley.

Malzahn and Nutt are doing great. Mustain, obviously, is not.

We don’t know how any of the players Paul Pasqualoni brought into UConn Wednesday will turn out. Hopefully they’ll be productive on the field and off. But excuse me if I squirm just a little at all the Signing Day coverage.