Sidelines
Recruiting mutates
into a big dealNOW is the time of year when grown men get all atwitter thinking about what some 17-year-old kid is going to do.
It's almost early February, and that means we're in the heated home stretch of one-third of three of the most anticipated seasons in college sports: Football, spring football and recruiting.
And it's a mess.
Where will he go? Why will he go? Why not here? He did? Yes!
The Internet was invented for this stuff.
Speculation has exploded along with technology. Everybody knows everything, everybody knows nothing. Recruiting is the great excuse for sports fans to use the phrase they've been longing to utter ever since they saw their first ESPN broadcast -- "according to my sources."
We have to wait until letter-of-intent day to see who's right.
Until then, kids commit and still visit other schools. Coaches continue to call. Names are confused on boards, lists and notebooks nationwide. Media and Web sites pounce on rumors, then scramble to back away.
Nobody knows what's going to happen.
And fans -- who should be blissfully ignorant of all this -- work themselves into a state of hopeful, desperate panic.
They love it, in that pre-heart attack sort of way.
But it's all much ado that means very little.
Make no mistake, recruiting makes all the difference. Three good classes in a row can turn a program around.
But a good class could mean simply more than a 50 percent return. Nobody knows who's going to pan out on the college level. Nobody. It's a crapshoot. It's weather forecasting. All you can do is project and pray. Recruiting jewels fade, walk-ons become legends.
The whole thing should be sanctioned by the Nevada Gaming Commission.
And besides, as June Jones said in December, landing a big fish comes down to one thing:
If a kid wants to come to your school, he will. If he doesn't, he won't.
So much for recruiting.
"For us to recruit one of the top quarterbacks in the country that everybody's recruiting, the chances of us landing that guy are slim even if he likes us after he comes, if it wasn't his idea to come," Jones said. "If it's our idea to go get him, the hit ratio is very low, from Dick Tomey's time to Bob Wagner's time to my time. We've tried that already since I've been here, and we've lost the kids that have been in that category.
"But if they want to come here and have a reason to want to come here, then our hit ratio goes up to 9 out of 10 we're going to get," Jones said. "So we're looking for those kids."
Everybody is.
The problem is finding them. The problem is finding out who wants to go where, who's serious about what.
It's an industry!
The problem is sometimes the kids -- faced with a daunting life-altering decision -- don't even know themselves yet, and the pressure mounts, and the phone rings and the clock ticks.
Meanwhile, we sit on edge, hoping to hear which way some teenager is "leaning."
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com