Despite my wish to give football recruiting stuff a break for a few weeks, this has to be mentioned.

Scout.com is escalating the process by holding its All-American Combine on March 4 at the UPMC Sports Performance Complex on the South Side.

The timing makes sense, says Scout.com analyst Bob Lichtenfels, because colleges are already extending scholarship offers to top-flight juniors.

“Today, the way the kids are, a lot of them don’t want to participate in them later in the spring because they have a plethora of offers,” Lichtenfels said. “You have to pick the lesser of the evils.”

That was the case last spring, when Baldwin’s Jason Pinkston and Justin Hargrove skipped the adidas and Nike combines, as well as Joe Butler’s Metro Index camp. All three are typically held in late April or May.
…
The early date is one way for Scout.com to stay a step ahead of its combine competitors, especially considering that Nike is aligned with Rivals.com.

“We try to pick it strategically,” Lichtenfels said. “There’s only so many Saturdays during the evaluation period that the coaches can come. It gives enough time to get away from the other (combines). When they’re in Pennsylvania, we’ll be out West or down South. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to compete for the same kids.”

These combines could be heading for extinction, or at least severe restructuring, though. Back in January at the American Football Coaches Association convention there was been a lot of talk about these combines as Bruce Feldman notes (Insider Subs.).

Anyhow, this week in Dallas at the AFCA (coaches convention) a proposal was put forth that could prohibit Division I colleges from actually hosting these combines.

I think this is a shrewd move because any hosting campus get a very unfair advantage over colleges that don’t.

Last spring, I was at a combine at Penn State with a recruit that said he had no plans of visiting State College, but was there solely for the combine. (Penn State was holding its junior day the day before the combine too, and to its credit, PSU did an impressive job.)

Places like USC, Texas A&M, Miami and a handful of others get an added opportunity to showcase their programs and their facilities that other schools miss out on. Coaches from all over the country flock to the sidelines of many of these combines, even though they aren’t able to formally communicate potential recruits. The thinking that at least they get to eyeball a kid in person.

That’s the plan anyway.

“You really don’t learn anything by seeing the kid go through those one-on-ones,” says one Big 12 assistant. “Most times the quarterbacks they’re going with can’t even get it near them anyhow. Basically, you’re there just so they can see you and that they know you love them. You gotta represent, you know?”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all combines will be shut down, and I don’t think they should be. Some of these are run by good people and some kids do benefit from them, but many of the ills seem to multiply in number each offseason.

That said, one of the bigger frustrations shared by the Big Ten head coaches focuses on some recruiting gurus using college campuses as backgrounds for staging group photo shoots. Their claim was that certain outsiders have apparent allegiances to some schools and can create situations in those schools’ favor. This, too, becomes another de facto college visit and appears to be much harder to legislate against. And then there is the growing concern over street agents.

“I don’t know if this is gonna really get at what we think is the real problem,” says one Big East assistant, “which is that football is getting too much like basketball with all these entourage, hanger-on guys. It’s like whoever you talk to now tells you ‘You gotta talk to such-and-such for me.’ And that guy is handling like three kids. One may be a kid you want, but the guy has two other kids who probably aren’t scholarship kids and the guy will keep saying, ‘I’m not an agent. I’m not an agent. I’m just here to help these kids get qualified or so they know what courses to take or just to give them a ride.’ It’s [expletive] weird, man.”

Anyone know when Pitt is hosting a junior day?

Joe Schad also noted similar things at the meetings regarding the combines:

It also turns out that coaches like lively debate. I realized this while sitting in on a meeting of Division I-A assistant coaches. They debated the merits of attending “combines” for high school players (not much of a debate, actually. They want to make it a violation for coaches to attend them).

“By 2007, we will be out of the combine business,” said Notre Dame assistant coach Rob Ianello, who is a Stepinac High grad (a rival of my St. Francis Prep) I must point out and is greatly respected as the leader of the assistant coaches organization.

The combines will continue. I don’t see how they won’t. But, I won’t be surprised if Div. 1A schools can no longer host them.

One other useless piece of information. The AFCA has a board for schools to post open schedule dates. Pitt posted something in 2004, and my guess is they haven’t gone back to updated it. Right now it reads:

Posted: 2-16-04
University of Pittsburgh
2008: 8/30, 9/6, 9/13, 9/20, 9/27, Home
2009: 9/5 Home or Away
2010: 9/4, 9/11, 9/25, 2 Home, 1 Away
2011: 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 9/24 Home and Away
2012: 9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, Home and Away
Contact: Jason Lener, Assistant AD

At least I hope they haven’t updated it in a while.