Well, it does make some sense.
When word spread that track star Mycaiah Clemons was transferring from Virginia Tech to Pitt, it didn’t take long for Internet message boards to do the mathematics.
That means Toney Clemons now has two sisters at Pitt (Mycah Clemons will be a senior) and puts the Panthers in the lead for the Valley stud receiver. Right?
“Everyone keeps asking me about him coming to Pitt,” Mycah Clemons said. “I can’t influence him. He has a lot of options. He’s got to make his own decisions.”
Clemons, who won the PIAA Class AA long jump and 110-meter high hurdles titles Saturday, said he has scholarship offers from Pitt, Akron, Cincinnati, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue.
I hear other schools are close,” Toney Clemons said, “but the ones that offer early, those are the ones who want you.”
As for his family influence, Clemons doesn’t deny that he comes from a tight-knit family, but added that Michigan receiver Steve Breaston (Woodland Hills) is a cousin.
That helps explain the Michigan Breaston jersey at a camp. Family-wise that makes it Pitt or Michigan, but Clemons seems interested in exploring the entire recruiting process. I wouldn’t be surprised if he holds off until at least November.
I’ve previously mentioned how the NCAA/College football coaches are going to do their best to shut down the appeal of all the combines and camps by banning the presence of coaches and prohibiting them from taking place at a school facility.
The reasoning is to prevent football from ending up too much like basketball recruiting with more emphasis on the AAU teams and the tournaments. In this case, the recruiting sites and apparel companies that sponsor the overwhelming and ever growing majority of them.
It is also ostensibly a quality of life thing for the coaches by keeping them from having to attend less events on the recruiting trail. It is also about trying to keep the recruiting sites from connecting with the kids and getting information about the recruitment — reducing the knowledge of who’s recruiting him, how hard and often
The last couple of weeks, there have been articles about the Metro Index Camp run out of Western PA by Joe Butler for some 26 years.
“The big conflict of interest is the weekend combines and how they’ve got coaches on the road 10 weeks out of the year,” Iowa assistant Ken O’Keefe said. “Guys with young families aren’t even getting back home. I think it’s a giant sacrifice. It’s putting an undue strain on a lot of people. We need to get the whole environment under control.”
O’Keefe noted that he has been a subscriber to the Metro Index scouting service since 1986, when he was an assistant at Allegheny College, and values the ability to watch prospects perform on a weeknight instead of sitting in a hotel room.
“Metro Index is not the reason they’re looking at this rule,” O’Keefe said. “Joe does things the right way.”
Although combines can draw hundreds of players, they often are slowed by testing in the 40-yard dash and pro shuttle times, of vertical leaps and in the bench press. Metro Index camps are more football-oriented, testing only in the 40 and pro shuttle and spending more time on drills. While major-college programs can discover a gem – former Blackhawk star Jeremy Bruce received an offer from West Virginia after a standout performance at the Nike camp in 2004 – coaches view some camps as a waste of their time.
“There’s a lot very well run, like this one, but there’s a lot of others that are just money markets,” said Rodriguez, who attended Metro Index with assistant Tony Gibson. “You get 600 guys and no true evaluations. Coaches become obligated to go to them, but you don’t really get anything out of it. It’s out of control.”
Metro Index stands to be collateral damage. The legislation can’t really exempt certain camps, and they definitely get kids to come because the college coaches attend and watch. Metro in addition to running football skill drills, also runs a subscription service coaches subscribe to for the information and charges kids to attend. Something the recruiting/apparel camps don’t do.
The other thing is the coaches quality of life argument. That the coaches have to attend because of every other coach attending. Even if they aren’t seeing anything new. It’s about staying even/competitive with other schools in recruiting.
“Coaches only have so many months to be home on the weekends and enjoy their families,” said Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “We’ve said enough is enough. There are so many of these camps now that coaches feel obligated to try and get to every one of them in order to remain competitive. The quality of life for our coaches is the primary concern. This is America, if someone wants to host a combine that’s their right and we won’t stop them. What we’re saying is coaches won’t be there.”
Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt echoed the sentiments of Teaff and many of the coaches who attended Metro Index in early May. He said coaches can arrive at the same conclusions about players without wasting time traveling to combines all over the country.
“This is the smartest thing the NCAA has ever done,” Wannstedt said. “We can’t coach at these camps, we can’t talk to the kids or their families, so all we do is stand there and watch a bunch of guys in shorts run over bags for two hours. There is no reason for us to be there. We could get the same info without being there.”
Other coaches like WVU’s Rich Rodriguez are not wild about the whole combine camps because they are hosted at campuses not named WVU. Pitt has hosted these camps from Metro, Scout.com and Rivals.com. You have Ohio St. and Penn St. both hosting Nike camps. The major competition all get to have the kids come to their campus for a visit that doesn’t count as a recruiting trip. Another perceived competitive disadvantage.
All the camps and their sponsors point to how some kids get noticed at the camps that they otherwise would have slipped past. How the kids would have ended up at a smaller school or in a lower division. Mind you, still on scholarship but at IUP instead of Iowa is the argument. Because, you know, it’s for the children.
