Three months ago at USC’s spring football game, high school safety Bubba Bolden eagerly waited on the field to take a picture with Clay Helton. Yesterday, he decommitted from USC. It’s just another example of the meaningless value of a verbal commitment.
These days the cottage industry of internet recruiting services overcover scholarship offers, commitments and then decommitments. On a side note, Bolden goes to Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas, where multiple commitments look normal (see Tate Martell).
#commitlivesdontmatter
True. We’ll be fine, its early. Ronnie Bradford needs to reel these players in when it counts.
How many commits does Cow Poly men’s soccer have, CowPolyFan3.0?
There was no such thing as a verbal commitment back in my day, you just had to wait, and read the paper the day after everybody, signed. And that’s pretty much what I do now, because the media, and high school players have turned everything into a , circus.
i don’t get surprised too much any more at my age, but sometimes i have to shake my head at how these grown men (coaches) have to kiss these kids bootys and coddle them like supermodels! some of these kids must get the idea they are truly the “One”!!
but then i do get a chortle when i see the coaches screaming at them in camp and the players have that “hey what happened, i thought you idolized me??” look on their face!! i saw a video of Harbaugh screaming at a kid and he yells right in his face: “don’t give me that look!! if you don’t like it, get the F*** out of here!!”
#Chortle
Exactly
I agree with both of you. These kids want to be courted all year and babied.
I seriously hope Ronnie Bradford coaches better than he recruits. It’s early, but there’s been a lot mixed reviews on his recruiting of players.
Wow, Hell-ton really know how to close deals!! We may have to start calling him “The Closer”
#LoseTheHat
Poor old USC. The Trojans never manage to sign great talent. Woe is me. This is so scary!
Yet somehow USC manufactures more college AAs, more first rounders and more NFL HOFamers than any other school in the land.
We’re probably out of time, poor old USC, the team that finished stronger in recruiting than any school in the country last Feb.
What a nightmare to lose Bubba! Maybe if we promised him 55 we can make him come. Please God. Let Bubba just be kidding and return.
As I’ve said, ‘SC better win this year or recruiting is going to tank. We’re on our way to being 3 star U if the product on the field isn’t more exciting than this staff appears to be.
Graham and Bolden are outstanding and they both wanted to come to SC badly. It bothers me that we have probably lost them.
I noticed we didn’t have the usual gaggle of Trojan commits rallying the troops at The Opening
. I do not know Bolden or Graham at all. But if they “wanted to come to SC badly” they would . Kids commit and de-commit all the time; for any # of reasons. It doesn’t just happen to USC.
I’m just going by what THEY said. Graham has a sister at SC. I think she runs track. He said that he was a childhood SC fan and wanted to attend college with his sister. That’s why he committed. Bolden also said that SC was his childhood dream team. That’s why he committed. They both said that they started to think about opening up their recruitment because the SC coaches were failing to keep contact with them. If the coaches don’t keep contact, then the athletes are going to naturally start wondering if they are still interested.
My point is this–if SC was their dream team and they were extended an offer then why wouldn’t they remain committed? What does it matter if the coaches keep in contact or don’t? The offer is the gift that validates that they are wanted. Unless, of course, the coaches have moved on from these kids and they are no longer wanted. That being said, I do not fault these 2 kids or any other recruit from changing their mind. Until they sign a NLI they have leverage–after that it all rests with the coaches. By all accounts these two guys are tremendous players and I hope SC gets them, and the coaches do all they can to bring them on board.
All I’m saying is that if you are a coach and you really want a player, you must keep in touch. If you don’t, the player is probably not going to just wait simply because he already has an offer. He’s almost forced to start looking elsewhere. An offer doesn’t mean that much. SC has already offered something like 170 players. That’s not a lot. I think I read that Ohio State has offered about 250 and Alabama has offered a lot too. These schools can only take 20-25, so an offer doesn’t mean much. Most of the players that SC has offered are not going to come to SC. They simply don’t have enough scholarships to give. You’ve got to keep in touch or you’re going to lose that player. They may still get them but they are great players and a lot of schools will be coming after them and telling them that the fact that SC didn’t keep contact is a sign that the trojans are no longer that interested.
Ya, I’m sure the USC coaches have never heard about keeping in touch with players who are committed. Hope someone tells Helton about this. He must not know anything about recruiting.
I’m sure they do know all about recruiting. Who knows. Maybe they’re just not interested in those guys but I don’t know why. Those kids appear to be really good players and they’ve offered other D-backs that don’t appear to me to be as good. Admittedly, I don’t have that kind of inside info. All I know is that they seem to be really great players and, in their own words, they are looking elsewhere because SC didn’t keep in touch. I’m just listening to what they said and trying to connect the dots. I could be wrong.
There’s plenty of misinformation out there about offers and just how committed a kid is in the first place. All some kid has to do is tell some recruiting reporter he’s got an offer and boom – he’s offered!
I know that some so-called decommits occur because there was never a firm offer in the first place (wishful thinking) or the staff has cooled and moved on or because there’s some gamesmanship going on.
And I like that USC makes their own decisions about who they want. There’s hundreds of 3-star prospects that are going to be better than 4-stars. Recruiting is about evaluation and fit, not just racking up the 5-stars. If we all figure we know how to evaluate better than the coaches then we missed our calling.
Graham and Bolden certainly did get firm offers. As to whether they are over-rated. We’ll know in a couple of years.
It’s your privilege to be all freaked out because of lost commitments in July. You seem to think you know more about which DBs USC should be offering and how they should be recruiting them than USC does.
I say what’s going on now is no big deal. What counts is in January and February and it often has nothing whatsoever to do with what is going on now.
USC’s coaches have already proven they know how to recruit and deserve better than being second guessed by a bunch of arm chair blog posters who don’t have the faintest idea about who USC should be recruiting or why.
Not freaked out at all. Just an opinion. As far as being an “armchair blogger”…….yeah…..I’d say that is a pretty good description of me. It’s a blog. That’s what blogs are for……armchair bloggers. If you didn’t have any armchair bloggers, you probably wouldn’t have much of a blog. Is everyone going to agree with me? NO! Are they going to tell me when they dis-agree? YES! That’s fine with me. It’s all part of having a blog. It’s a place where you can state your opinions, even if they are wrong. It’s a place where other people can tell you that you are wrong. They can even call you names. That’s fine with me. Actually, I learn a lot on this blog because a lot of these people really do know a lot. But ultimately, it’s just a blog.
Sam Bam accurately explained to you what happened with both Graham and Bolden. He filled in the gaps, explaining to this blog and to you what was really going on. In both cases, USC either just let the guy go, or didn’t want to pay the price to get him. Obviously, USC doesn’t consider them the so-called “losses” you do.
That’s my original point. USC coaches know exactly what they’re doing and they’re not just simply failing to keep in touch with recruits they want, which was a concern you expressed. What, you think they’re lazy? Try again.
As Sam Bam also pointed out, as well as myself, there’s plenty of time in this horse race and July is not the time to be worried about decommits.
Last Feb, literally on LOI Day, we nailed two superior prospects no one had the any expectations for. Wow. I guess the coaches do know who they really want and when they should be in touch.
Some of us are a lot more informed on this blog than others. Glad those people are here to explain what’s really happening, since SW has no clue and can’t ever answer questions posed by posts like yours.
My statements are just opinions. They’re not dogmatic statements. I actually agree with you that it’s too early to say, with certainty, too much about recruiting. But you say that “the coaches know EXACTLY what they are doing”. I’d also say that it is a little too early to say that with any certainty. If SC goes 5-7 next year, I think there will be a lot of people questioning whether they know what they are doing. So far, I’m encouraged but we’ll see. Time will tell.
Recruiting is a very specific business that follows a timetable and pattern. It’s very learnable and rewards salesmanship and being robotic at making calls, writing notes, texting, etc.
Recruiting is often not very correlative with actual coaching. You don’t need to be brilliant as a recruiter. But smarts really helps in certain coaching positions. For instance, USC’s DC refuses to recruit. He’s not good at that and he knows it. But he’s very well respected as an on-the-field coach.
Even though Pete Carroll was a great coach and had some terrific assistants for awhile, when he put his son in charge of recruiting, things began to fall apart. His son, whom we used to refer to as Spaulding, wasn’t a good on the field coach either. But recruiting is very different from coaching. Lots of good recruiters aren’t very good coaches and vice versa.
If USC goes 5-7, their recruiting organization, no matter how good or bad, won’t matter. You’ve got to be able to coach ’em up and help ’em play in the big games with good plans and emotional prep.
Also, with USC’s brand, it’s always easier to recruit. But the brand doesn’t always help on the field, especially today, because you don’t run into many teams that are intimidated like they might have been before.
The bottom line is, the apparent losses of Graham and Bolden aren’t the big losses you portrayed them to be. You seem to have a hard time swallowing that, so go ahead and believe as you want. As I said, some bloggers know a lot more about what’s really going on than others.
If we win, recruiting won’t be a problem. If we don’t, CH and his boys will have a lot of arm chair bloggers to deal with whether they know what they are talking about or not. But like I said, that comes with the territory.
Good points. But I do wonder if this lack of contact is overblown. It is an issue with a lot of kids at a lot of schools. Considering how many of these kids are allowed to believe they are the be all to end all, any lessening of affection can be viewed as outright rejection.
It’s not only the athletes. It’s young people, in general. One famous person once called this generation the “me generation”. We are raising a generation of narcicists. That’s just a cultural problem the coaches and everyone else must deal with and hope that you’re too old to care when they take over the country.
Nobody here really knows what USC’s coaches are thinking or why they are doing what they are doing. They probably laugh out loud at half the stuff on this board if they read or hear about it.
I try to be a little objective and give the benefit of doubt to most people. Clay Helton and staff may or may not be bad recruiters but I seriously doubt they are not being attentive to who they need and want.
Bolden thought since Colorado was recruiting him the hardest (USC 2nd) that USC took him for granted. He also wanted his best friend to be offered a scholarship by SC so they can play together. SC wasn’t willing to offer Alex Perry. I think we can say his “ego” and his “demands” were far more important than USC was willing to give. Grahams a whole different situation. The staff just stopped calling him. Point blank.
Did CO offer Perry?
Yeah, but I think Arizona St is the school that they both like after SC, only SC has other CB’S higher on their board and won’t offer Perry just to land Bolden.
If that is true that Bolden wanted us to give his friend a scholarship, then I agree with SC. I wouldn’t waste a scholie on his best friend just to get him. Let’s just wait and see where he actually ends up signing and see if Alex Perry goes with him.
It’s most likely he was chasing a Poke’mon and realized he should decommitt before he gets locked into a stadium with no Charzards.
Kids in high school these days have manufactured the illusion of maturity, beneath the surface there is no substance.