Doc: Tuberville's UC recruiting off to rocky start
4:50 PM, Jan 12, 2013
Tommy Tuberville is 58 years old and admittedly has some old-school ways, but the new University of Cincinnati football coach also promises to bring some pizzazz to the table.
Pizzazz as in a high-flying, explosive offense.
"At Texas Tech we were No. 2 (nationally) in passing offense," Tuberville said. "We'll go very fast and we'll run a lot of plays. It'll be exciting to watch."
(Photo by The Enquirer's Joseph Fuqua II)
Written by
Paul Daugherty
Tommy Tuberville hasn’t fumbled at the goal line. There is no flag on the play. Recruiting is ugly and strange and the ugly strangeness cuts all ways. Stories of how “kids’’ pick their schools have been curling notebook pages for decades. Tuberville isn’t a scoundrel. He just coaches quasi-amateur football. A hint of scoundrel is in the DNA.
But the man is bumping into some furniture.
It’s probably not a good idea to alienate Massillon High. Massillon isn’t what it used to be. But it still produces big-time talent. And its influence isn’t slight. If the coach there calls you out, and you are the new UC football coach seeking inroads into the state’s motherlode of talent, you have made a tactical error.
Massillon quarterback Kyle Kempt had committed to UC when Butch Jones was still in Clifton. When Jones left, Kempt told Tuberville he would be re-thinking his options. Tuberville said UC would do likewise. The logic was, “You’re a quarterback. You’re important. We can’t operate on a ‘maybe’ basis with you.’’
UC moved on, and quickly signed another QB. That displeased Kempt and his coach.
"I think they thought he was going to go to Tennessee with Butch Jones and they offered another quarterback,’’ Massillon coach Jason Hall told the Canton Repository last week. “But that wasn't the case. Cincinnati will not be allowed back in Massillon on our campus as long as Jason Hall is in Massillon."
You could argue that Hall’s decision is hurting the very same players he’s trying to protect. Limiting an athlete’s college options isn’t Hall’s job. But his point is well taken. A deal is a deal, in most arenas of repute. In college football, a deal means nothing at all.
We shouldn’t forget that players do this to coaches, too. Few humans are less predictable than 18-year-olds. We’re talking typical 18-year-olds, not football studs whose self-importance grows with every text message and home visit. These kids aren’t great at managing life solo, let alone with an orchestra of self-interested voices competing for time and space in their heads.
Sometimes, mom and pop can control the noise. Just as often, they contribute to it.
New football coach Tommy Tuberville watches practice at UC's practice bubble. / The Enquirer/Glenn Hartong
A few days after Hall was running off Tuberville, a high school linebacker named Alex Anzalone was a day from signing a letter of intent to attend Notre Dame. Anzalone changed his mind and signed with Florida instead, ostensibly over concerns that Irish coach Brian Kelly would be the next coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.
(You mean Brian “Dream Job’’ Kelly? That Brian Kelly? Yeah. Scoundrels of the world, unite.)
Before that, Anzalone had committed to Ohio State, then de-committed after he’d made contact with a Buckeyes fan. The larger problem was the fan, Charles Eric Waugh, was a registered sex offender. Lovely.
Anzalone didn’t know that. As soon as he found out, he turned his sights to Notre Dame. And so it goes.
Tuberville has ridden a whirlwind since his hiring a month ago. One of the biggest rides involved sorting out the recruits who’d agreed verbally to play for Jones. A UC source told me Saturday that every kid who’d made a verbal commitment to play in Clifton had been contacted by the new staff, and given his options.
At least one recruit went with Jones to Tennessee. Others de-committed and stayed available. Others, Tuberville decided he didn’t want. “Eight or 10 guys,’’ the source told me. A few of those players have complained publicly. They are right to howl. But don’t put all the blame on Tuberville.
The new sheriff arrives, he wants his own deputies. Signing Day is Feb. 6. Telling players at this late date they have to look elsewhere is heinous. It could also be a mistake, especially with the Massillon QB. Tuberville, who says he wants the bulk of his recruits to come from this region, has burned a bridge already.
That said, the system makes it all but inevitable.
The NCAA could amend that. It could declare January a “dead’’ period for recruiting. It could move back Signing Day a month, thus eliminating the urgency for a coach to leave a job before his team finishes its year, in a bowl game. It would give all involved another month to catch a breath and sort out the sordid details.
Colleges could do something even more radical. They could mandate that all contracts be five years. The coach can’t leave, the college can’t fire him. That’s one entire recruiting cycle. If both parties opt for shorter deals after that, OK. But set the first five in stone. That’d turn down the heat on the current madness.
Either that, or keep it as is. If Tuberville wins big at UC, nobody will care how screwed up the current system is. Except maybe a few players. Right now, they’re just commodities. That’s the real problem.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130...ocky-start