BOULDER — Because Dan Hawkins often uses the strength-in-numbers approach in taking a handful of assistant coaches with him for the crucial in-home visits with high school football prospects, it’s probably inaccurate to portray him as a better “closer” than either Bobby Bowden in his prime or Kyra Sedgwick on cable.
Yet even as he still has to prove that his often quirky coaching approach can work in a BCS conference, this is apparent: The guy can recruit.
No, the Buffs’ 2009 prospect class, the fourth of Hawkins’ tenure, won’t be ranked in any dot-coms’ top 25 and won’t make Charlie Weis jealous. But with Legacy defensive end Nick Kasa as the headliner in the group announced on Wednesday’s national letter of intent signing date, it appears to be solid and at least a step forward.
It shows just how ridiculous the dot-com, pony and cable show of recruiting has gotten when a coach known to be good at the process is shaking his head at the end of it.
“The whole recruiting thing is just . . . It’s out of control, it really is,” Hawkins said at the Dal Ward Center. “It’s bizarre beyond means. We just try to be as matter-of-fact as we can with these guys. We understand their heads are spinning.
“I don’t try to get into, ‘I’m better than another coach, and we’re better than another . . . There are great things about every place, and you have to decide what’s great for you.’ ”
It used to be that when coaches said they detested recruiting, they meant the physical and mental grind of travel and salesmanship, or their loathing of the ethical dilemmas they faced in trying to land the elite of the elite.
Today?
The worst of the cheating in recruiting — including the promises of outright payments — is largely gone, not so much because coaches (and boosters) suddenly have sprouted angels’ wings, but because you can’t get away with it any more.
The worst part is the unfortunate overexposure of the entire process, in everything from filling cable time, to print, to the cottage industry of dot-com “prospect” immersion coverage from the time these guys are, what, 12? Some players revel in it. Many don’t. Either way, it’s gotten ridiculous.
I just wish recruiting hadn’t become such a circus, that young men (and women) could make their choices in a lower-key atmosphere; and that the dot-com enthusiast sites weren’t given so much credence, both as evaluators of talent and chroniclers of the “orally commit,” “decommit,” “recommit,” “sign-on-the-bottom-line” world.
As in any business, the credibility and ethics of the dot-com recruiting sites run the gamut. At least nowadays, some of the men making the judgments have been in the game and know the difference between a drop-step and a polka; only a few years ago, much of the loudest charting came from information-gatherers who, despite their claims, were little more than glorified hobbyists. (Coverage of the NFL draft has evolved similarly.) But it’s still in transition. As the legitimization of the “gurus” continues, there are potential hazards as they — whether honorable or otherwise — annually influence and not just cover the process.
“What’s sort of interesting is they’ve kind of continued to take the head coach out of the loop,” Hawkins said. “You can’t go out in the spring. They won’t let coaches text (prospects). But all these guys who work for these websites and all these Internet sites, they call ’em and text ’em and they badger the heck out of ’em. . . . I always (ask), ‘What would be the one thing you’d change,’ and they always say, ‘I wish those (dot-com) guys wouldn’t call me anymore.’
“I’ve had guys on trips, they’ll be here, and guys from whatever, such-and-such website will be texting them every 15 minutes, going, ‘Don’t commit, don’t commit, don’t commit.’ Well, they’re not coaching for X-Y-Z school, but they’re certainly recruiting for X-Y-Z school, right? You say get the coaches back, but then you have a whole bevy of other people who are making money and making a living off this stuff and they’re just hammering ’em. That’s hard. That’s hard for those kids. That’s one thing I’d change, for sure.”
I say we should just decommit and start all over.
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
