Dabo: Early signing period would eliminate recruiting headaches |
CLEMSON – Count Clemson head coach
Dabo Swinney
Dabo Swinney National Signing Day is in early February for football, the only time during the year that prospects can send in their national letters of intent to schools. “Oh yeah. Absolutely. It’s ridiculous that we don’t have one,” Swinney said Wednesday evening. [The current system] is a waste of a lot of time and people’s money. It would eliminate a lot of the garbage going on right now in recruiting. You know how I am anyway – if a guy is committed and he is taking visits, then he is not committed. That is their right, and I wouldn’t tell someone to not go and take visits, I would just tell them not to commit. But you can’t hold someone’s scholarship and have us more committed to them than they are to us.” Swinney threw out the date of September 15th as a possible early signing date. “If you are committed, that is what it means. It would really be beneficial to both sides if you had a signing day,” he said. “There are a lot of different theories. Take September 15th for example and look at us – we had 17, 18, or 19 commits before we ever played a game. If those guys don’t sign with you on that date, then you know they aren’t committed and you know you have to go to work. If he won’t sign with you then you know there is a problem. The flip side of that is that all the guys that do sign with you, they can enjoy their senior year and can enjoy having the confidence of knowing they have a scholarship and not have someone pull it in January. I think it would be beneficial to both sides. I think it would be beneficial because guys are committing so early. You get guys that are committed for two years – that is a long time. When you only sign 25 a year and only go by a need and get that one committed, you have to depend on him to be there and have a scholarship for him.” Swinney said he tries to talk prospects out of their commitment in order to gauge how serious they are about giving a verbal. “If you have those and they don’t commit, then you could really target and move on to those that are committed,” he said. “I tell them up front - I just tell guys up front and I am sure the coaches cringe every time they bring me a prospect or I get on the phone with one. The first thing I do is I try to talk them out of it. Then I ask them if they are serious, and I define it so we can agree on a definition. But I tell them if they want to be a commit and take visits to other places, then don’t commit. Let us just keep recruiting you. I don’t know what is so complicated about it. We try to not operate like that here. I wouldn’t want a guy to not do anything that is not best for him. When a guy makes a commitment at Clemson, we define it up front. There is no gray area. We have to make sure we can cover ourselves. When people are committed to other schools and they reach out to us, then they are not committed to that other school.” On players leaving On practice this week and health of the team “There are not many tomorrows left. Guys have been focused. We have had a good week of practice. Everybody is healthy and ready to go.” On starting offensive linemen playing so much against Maryland “It just kind of happened that way. We wanted to put the other guys in there, and we wanted to get Cole [Stoudt] a series with that first group. It went a little longer than we thought. Then that drive went from the third quarter into the fourth quarter and when we got the ball back it just worked out we didn’t get the other guys many opportunities. But we wanted to let Cole get work with that first group.”
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among those who would be in favor of an early signing period for college football recruits.
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