Good morning boys and girls. Ahhhhhh yes, the summer holidays are behind us now and it is smooth sailing toward the start of the 2015 – 2016 season. Yep, life is good.
But hey kids, I got a few emails over the last few weeks that lead me to do some digging. Yep, lots of our readers tune me into things that are better off being dead and buried.
So I know you will find this hard to believe, but there are teams, and therefore leagues, that are making claims of NCAA commitments that aren’t exactly accurate, and pretty damn misleading. Yes, I know, you are shocked that a team may want to fudge the truth a little huh?!
Anyway, I started doing a little digging into all of these commitment lists, and what do you know, I found a butt load of commitments that weren’t exactly commitments!
You know how it works kids, you sign with junior teams that move players on to NCAA programs. That’s what youre looking for. Its what parents are looking for. Guess what? Teams know this.
Why do you think each team markets each college commitment so much? Because its the key to successful recruiting. Yep, that’s it in a nut shell really. Nothing else matters except moving kids on.
So I started going through websites of teams. Looking at all these great commitments they boast. I took into account that some kids red shirt, or don’t go to school the year they were committed.
Then I followed up and reached out to some players and asked them some pretty important questions. You know, the kind of questions you parents and players are usually too polite to ask. Things like “how much scholarship money did you get?”.
You will never believe what I found out!
There are a whole whack of kids that are touted as NCAA commitments at both D-1 and D-3 that have never played a single game! Yep, I know its hard to believe isn’t it. Surely teams wouldn’t say something that was misleading would they?! Ha Ha Ha
But it gets even better. Some of these kids I reached out to said their “commitment” didn’t come with any scholarship money! Ummmmmmm yeah, so what do you make of that mom and dad?!
You know what a D-1 commitment is without any money coming your way? Its a ticket to about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in student loan debt! Yep, now that is something!
To be fair, there were some kids that got “committed” that didn’t get money right away, but they got a little money in their Junior and Senior seasons. A little, not a lot.
There were also some kids that actually got to play even though they didn’t get money. Then again there were a bunch of kids that didn’t get to play at all.
At the D-3 level, there were a whole bunch of kids that got some academic money, but sadly they didn’t make the team. Yep, that’s right kids, at D-3 you got to make the team every year. Nothing is guaranteed at the D-3 level.
Even better were the “commitments” that are so inaccurate that they say NCAA when they are actually ACHA schools!
Moral of the story boys and girls? Do a little research before you sign with any team. A commitment without a financial commitment isn’t really much of anything, and a commitment without playing is nothing.
If you find teams with these kinds of claims, let me know, I think I might just publish a list of some of the offenders.
*The Death Pool is a mix of comedy, and satire in connection with recent events. It is not an official report of current events although it may look as though the news is so accurate that it could one day happen or may be happening.
