Jan 25th, 2010
By October, 24 high school players had verbally committed to play football at Stanford next year, earning the Cardinal a high ranking by all the internet recruiting services and earning Jim Harbaugh praise for his recruiting skills.
The Cardinal has added 10 commitments for next year since then, and so now the total number of recruits committed to Stanford is . . . 24?
Jim Harbaugh is offering scholarships earlier -- Associated Press photo
Is the Cardinal leaking commitments? It appears that since 10 players who originally committed to Stanford are now headed elsewhere, there must be something is wrong with the Cardinal recruiting model or perhaps recruits are becoming increasingly concerned that Harbaugh may leave to go elsewhere in a year or two.
Things may not be what they seem.
In reality, Harbaugh has undertaken a new method of recruiting, one that is prone to losing some players who have committed but perhaps paying off at the end of the day.
One of the biggest drawbacks to recruiting at Stanford is that recruits do not learn whether they have been admitted until the summer before their senior year – at the earliest. Typically, Cardinal coaches wait until the student has been admitted before offering him or her a scholarship, and by then the athlete has grown weary of waiting to hear from Stanford and has committed elsewhere.
That’s why so many of Stanford’s commitments come late in the process.
You may have noticed that Harbaugh was getting a number of early commitments, giving the Cardinal an early lead among Pac-10 schools in the recruiting battle.
In the final Stanford class recruited by Walt Harris, only three players who signed for 2006 committed before November of 2005, and in Harbaugh’s first class, only four of the players who signed for 2007 committed before November. However, 15 of Stanford’s commitments for 2010 made their verbal commitment before November 2009.
That’s atypical for Stanford and resulted from a new tactic by Harbaugh. What he did was target athletes who looked like they could get admitted, and offered them a scholarship while outlining what they needed to do academically to gain admission.
Having that offer in hand made Stanford a lot more attractive, and quite a few highly rated recruits took Harbaugh up on the offer before being guaranteed admission.
Not surprisingly, Stanford lost some who subsequently realized they couldn’t or were unwilling to achieve what was required for admission and ended up de-committing from Stanford and going elsewhere. Some de-committed for other reasons, of course, but gaining admission seems to be the predominant reason. But 11 players who gave a verbal commitment to Stanford in July or earlier are still committed to the Cardinal and, at this point, they figure to stay committed until the Feb. 3 signing day.
The criticism of Harbaugh’s method was that he was offering scholarships to athletes who might not get into school. But we here at JakesTakeOnSports have no problem with a method if it outlines to the student what needs to be done to gain admission. It is then up to the student to accomplish what was required. As long as Harbaugh is not deceitful in his original scholarship offer, we see no problem in the method. In fact, it sounds like a good idea. Not only can Harbaugh present scholarship offers a lot earlier than he could otherwise, but athletes who want to attend Stanford have a clear idea of what they have to do to get there, knowing the scholarship will be there for them if they do what is required.
This strategy requires a lot of research by the Stanford football office to target the appropriate students well before they become high school juniors so they have ample time to meet the admission standards.
Harbaugh no doubt knows he will lose some commitments this way.
However, even though the Cardinal has lost those 10 commitments, Stanford’s incoming class for next year is still ranked No. 13 in the nation by rivals.com and No. 16 by scout.com. Among Pac-10 shcools, only USC’s 2010 recruiting class is ranked higher than Stanford’s at the moment.
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Not too sure how I found this blog but glad I did find it. Think I was looking for something else on google. Not sure I agree 100% with what you say, but have bookmaked and will pop back to read to see if you add any more posts. Keep up the good work.