Thursday, February 8, 2007

It’s a national letter of intent world and we’re not living in it.


I know that Nike, ESPN, and other evil media types have put the high school athlete in the crosshairs but National LOI day has become has become an “NFL draft” type of guy holiday. I can’t even imagine what kind of sales pitches these kids and their parents are getting from coaches around the country.

That leads me back to the NWC and Division III. We all know there are no athletic scholarships at our level and also no letters of intent to be signed. Pretty much you know when a kid is going to come to your school is when they send in their deposit. That is about as close to an LOI as you’re going to get and it’s rare for a DIII school to work up a press release about that info.

Personally, I would love to know in advance what recruits have committed to Linfield but I’m not going to lose much sleep over it. We are going to get exceptional students and exceptional football players at Linfield…just without the fan fair.

So for the time we just have to sit back and read about the small state school programs and their LOI days and how coaches “heard that XXX could be national contenders” or freshly committed players say “"I think this next season they'll be a strong contender for the national championship."

Should I tell them that XXX is already eliminated from the 2007 playoffs before the season starts due to their schedule? Guess the recruiter forgot to mention that?

4 comments:

Beancounter said...

WC11.....here is something that ought to amuse each of us...the spread in today's Salem Statesman-Journal about the "biggest and bestest" recruiting class coming in to Western Oregon.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070208/SPORTS/702080347/1018

Just remember that just beccause these guys sign doesn't mean they are going. I really wonder what is left of last years' recruiting class at WOU, also said to be great at that time.

Wildcat 11 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wildcat 11 said...

Bean,

DA WOU is really pushing the self-prise about where they're headed as a program. That's fine and they are getting much better but at this point they still haven't done much besides beat us (which stinks) but they don't have a hell of a lot to hang their hat on besides that.

Beancounter said...

Historically , WOU hasn't even done that. Over the last 20 years, the Cats are 12-2 over the Wolves....and the scores haven't been very pretty, even without Brett Elliott. If WOU is bragging about beating a division 3 team, they look foolish. They would be better off setting their sights on Western Washington than to worry about Linfield. One of these days they'll figure out that wins over d3 teams aren't going to help them.