I know what I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to rip Arizona coach Lute Olson and feel sorry for high school point guard Reger Dowell because when a coach rescinds a scholarship offer, it's considered bad form, and that's exactly what Olson did. He accepted a commitment from Dowell last month, promised him a place in the Arizona program.
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| Arizona coach Lute Olson flips the switch on recruits by not honoring his word. (Getty Images) |
So now I'm supposed to rip Olson.
And feel sorry for Dowell.
But I didn't rip Brandon Jennings and feel sorry for Olson when Jennings left Arizona hanging and went to Europe. And I didn't rip Emmanuel Negedu and feel sorry for Olson when Negedu asked for a release from Arizona and enrolled at Tennessee. And I didn't rip Greg Smith and feel sorry for Olson when Smith decommitted from Arizona and opted for Fresno State.
So why should I rip Olson and feel sorry for Dowell in this situation?
Are coaches' words worth more than the words of the prospects they recruit?
OK, yes, probably so.
I get that.
But let's face it, recruiting has been a cutthroat business for some time, and I've seen so many promises broken on so many levels from so many angles that it has become difficult to feel sorry for anybody, regardless of the circumstances. At this point, everybody involved should know the score -- that all is fair in love and verbal commitments, and that there's no sense in trying to talk about some preferred etiquette that only exists in a perfect world because, you know, that perfect world doesn't actually exist.
In a perfect world, a coach would offer a scholarship, the prospect would accept it and that would be the end of every recruiting story -- just like in a perfect world, schools wouldn't hire AAU coaches based on nothing more than their connections to prospects, and programs wouldn't pay thousands of dollars for the fathers of recruits to speak at clinics in an attempt to gain influence.
Let the record show, I'm all for a perfect world. But again, the reality is that we never lived in a perfect world, meaning the only practical approach these days is to take the business of recruiting for what it is.
It's nasty.
It's opportunistic.
It's not for folks who enjoy looking themselves in the mirror.
And though it's rare for a program to flat-out rescind an offer after the prospect has accepted, it's not rare for a program to run a prospect off campus once it recruits above his head. Or for a prospect to transfer once he decides he's not getting the playing time he expected. Or for a prospect to bail on a school when the coaching situation changes. Or for a coach to promise to spend four years with a prospect before taking a different job one year later.
In other words, coaches screw prospects all the time.
And prospects screw coaches all the time.
Which brings me back to Dowell.
The Dowell family is upset about how all this went down and they've claimed they've been wronged, which, in fairness, is probably true to some degree. But it's worth noting that before Dowell was committed to Arizona, he was committed to Alabama right up until he decided he did not want to be committed to Alabama anymore. When that happened, Dowell "opened up" his recruitment and provided the following quote to Scout.com's Evan Daniels: "I just want to (weigh) all of my options and give other schools a chance to get involved."
Interesting, isn't it?
Seems Arizona merely did to Dowell what Dowell previously did to Alabama. So if you want to get worked up about it, that's fine. But to me, it's just another chapter in the cutthroat business of recruiting -- where I've seen so many promises broken on so many levels from so many angles that, once again, it has become difficult to feel sorry for anybody, regardless of the circumstances.
