On The Urban Meyer-Mike Gundy Signing Day Disagreement

Mike Gundy has taken a surprisingly passionate stance in favor of the proposed new early signing periods for colleges to ink high school football players. What are the new signing periods? Well, it looks like the NCAA is about to install two new signing periods before the normal February signing day.

Here’s Dan Wolken on the issue.

The NCAA Division I Council submitted a proposal Wednesday to introduce two 72-hour periods — one in June and one in mid-December — where football recruits can sign National Letters of Intent. The December date correlates to the ability of junior college players to sign scholarship papers.

Mike Gundy is in favor of this for obvious reasons (more on this in a moment).

“With the early signing period – in my opinion – anybody at our level who doesn’t agree with that, I’d like to have debate with them about why they didn’t,” said Gundy on Wednesday. “It does two things: Financially, it helps all schools involved, so it’s going to save money. For some of the bigger schools it might not matter, but for the other ones, they need an opportunity to save money.

“Secondly, it won’t eliminate, but I think it will greatly reduce cheating. There won’t be as many games played in January. Ninety percent or so of the young men that are going to sign in February, would have already signed in December. I threw that number out there, and I’m just guessing based on our history at Oklahoma State and how many players we had committed in December – it’s 80-90 percent of your class. So, if it saves money for the athletic departments and it greatly reduces cheating, I can’t imagine why that wouldn’t be better for college football.”

What Gundy didn’t say is that there’s a third reason: OSU benefits from being able to lock up players early on. The OUs, Texas’, Alabamas and Ohio States of the world can swoop in late, offer a scholarship and boom, that’s it. Nelson Mbanasor is a prime example of this. If there was a June signing period, he might already be locked into OSU for 2017.

The Oklahoma States and Texas Techs of the world do the junior year legwork here and the big boys reap the benefits. This is not always the case of course, but the build-in advantage for the big dogs of the recruiting world certainly de-incentivizes OSU going hard after players they think will be studs. This would not be the case if you could make them sign their name on a piece of paper in June or December.

Urban Meyer is of course opposed to this. Passionately opposed. Maybe he and Gundy should debate. I would watch that before I would watch Hillary-Trump III.

“I keep hearing about this early signing period, early access, and let’s move everything up and it’s, I still can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” said Meyer earlier this year.

“We’re absolutely opposed to that. I hear the reasoning is because there’s so many de-commitments. What the hell does that mean? So because 18-year-olds — excuse me, 17-year-olds — are de-committing, let’s give them a legal document so they can’t de-commit? That’s not very smart. Young people have a right to choose where they want to go to school. Period. Let them de-commit a hundred times. That’s why they’re called 17-year-olds.

“So I don’t understand, whether it’s lazy, whether it’s, you know, I don’t understand why this big push. Now they want to move junior, like have official visits in their junior year. There’s some kids that don’t even have ACT scores. They’re bodies are gaining 18 pounds. Why not move it back to their sophomore year? It’s bizarre. You’re going to see more transfers and more mistakes made in recruiting than ever if they keep pushing this thing up.”

Of course Meyer would say this. Those recruits are de-committing from Oklahoma State to go to Ohio State when he offers them. The proposed early signing period creates more front-end work for him and his staff. Gundy and Meyer are taking the correct positions for each of their schools. The ones that benefit them most.

As an OSU fan, I’m on board with Gundy because it would certainly benefit OSU to lock up players earlier rather than later. As a human being and parent, I have to side with Meyer. What is best for high school kids? I think it is that you give them as much time as possible to showcase their skills to play at the best possible school in college.

You can say, “well, the longer they can be evaluated, the greater possibility of injury or that coaches don’t like them anymore.” That may be true, but it would seem to be the exception to the rule. The rule being that college coaches only need to catch a glimpse of greatness to make an offer. Why sign in June when you have your entire senior year to showcase your stuff?

These signing dates are not created equally either. The December one I can get on board with. Remove all the silliness in January and let high school kids sign when junior college kids sign. The June date, though? That seems like a little much.