Kentucky Football: Today’s the Day for Football Written Offers

I'm not sure what the big secret is. The recruits will publish the information on twitter from those schools they are interested in. The recruiting "experts" with ties to whatever schools they're tied to will find out. They will make their claims of knowledge via their premium websites. That's a crappy way for Joe Public to find out because Joe Public will have to pay to have the information or wait on the coming commitments.

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That's what you'll be inundated with if you visit Rivals, 247 Sports, Scout and ESPN's Recruiting Nation. The claim will be made that this is all being done for you, but you'll have to pay for it. This is crony capitalism. It isn't crony capitalism at its worst, but it stinks nonetheless if you are interested in recruiting. Why?

1.       Most schools are taxpayer funded institutions. I assume most of us pay taxes to fund these schools at the federal level, the state level or both. That should mean that the taxpayers have a right to know. You can find out the school's salaries, budget, revenues and expenses very easily. Would it not be proper, then, to provide the public with committed dollars for potential athletes?

2.       When the written offers go out, the school is making a commitment to the recruits who receive the written offers. The lists have been trimmed by each school. According to 247 Sports, Kentucky put forth 280 verbal offers. I can promise you that they won't be sending out 280 written offers.

I'm trying to put together an updated big board for our readers. Having the knowledge of who received a written offer would mean I could give our readers a snapshot of those who hold meaningful offers and drop those from the board who UK wasn't serious about. Life would be simple. Life would be easy. I guess that's the reason for all the secrecy. Life isn't supposed to be easy or simple when information has value. I refuse to pay. Period. So, what you get from me is pretty much common knowledge. August 1st is the day that schools send out written offers.

Actually, while the school commits in writing, meaning the school will accept a commitment from whoever gets that letter, the player can change his mind at any time because his commitment is still a verbal commitment until he either enrolls for the January semester/quarter, signs a National Letter of Intent or contract for Grant-In-Aid on National Signing Day in February. Even then, he can back out of his commitment by not enrolling. Of course the school can also back out, using the NCAA scholarship limit of 85 that they can't exceed. There are schools I won't name who over-sign players and then trim their lists down to meet the limit.

That's my opinion for whatever it's worth. Most likely, it's worth about what it cost you.