An idea for coaches

There’s an old saying about college football coaches. Recruits who are wined and dined and courted, made to feel like the Queen of Sheba, made to feel like their homestead is the epicenter of the universe, get a rude awakening when they hit campus as members of the team.

“Whatever happened to the nice man who was recruiting me?” The athletes suddenly are in boot camp, with a conditioning coach who gets in their grill and lets them know they’ve entered a new world. They are run, they are drilled and they are yelled at. It gets marginally better when practice starts, particularly off the field, but on the gridiron, they are run, they are drilled and they are yelled at.

So here’s what I want to see. I would like coaches to baptize these guys even earlier. Tell the truth on signing day. “Joey Allstate from Southside High School? He’s too fat. He’ll help us if he drops about 20 pounds and learns to skip the cheeseburgers.” Or “Speedy Simpson from Meadow Tech can run like the wind, but he better learn to take a hit. He’s softer than a feather bed.” Or “Bubba Ratcliffe is a risk. He can block and he can tackle and he could jump to the NFL right now, but if he doesn’t learn to read, no way he’s going to make it at our school. He’s dumb as a stump.”

Today, from Mike Gundy and Bob Stoops and every other coach in America, we are going to hear about what an excellent class was signed. The speech is the same every year. We all know it’s not necessarily true, and the coaches know we know it’s not true, and we know the coaches know it’s not true. But they keep saying it and we keep reporting it and the fans keep celebrating it.

This recruiting game is the REAL fantasy football. A little honesty would change that.