Recruiting is a weird, wonderful, awful, incredible business.
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And let's be clear: it is absolutely a business. It's been that way for generations, going back to an alarming report issued by the Carnegie Foundation in 1929, where they expressed concern about the fact that schools across the United States, but particularly in the South were "cut throat" in their competition for high school recruits, and that this competition involved (gasp) monetary bribes to players and their families.
Shocking I know, but the point is that this kind of hand-wringing over the nature of recruiting is nothing new. Money at times exchanges hands, kids are pushed off to other colleges, and sometimes kids are given promises that coaches have no intention of keeping. Parents, players, and coaches have always had at least an implicit understanding that these are natural parts of the business of recruiting, but in 2016 added dimensions of the media and self-promotion make things more muddled than ever.
That's why we brought on our recruiting analyst Jeremy Birmingham this week to talk about what it's like for a big time high school football recruit. He's not just our Lord of Whispers (and yes, we do talk about how the Buckeye recruiting class stacks up against the rest of the country), he's also made it clear that he'd like to see some changes in how recruiting is done, and that's what we focus in on this week.
Also Ask Us Anything! The lifeblood of the Dubcast, you can ask us quite literally anything via Twitter or through email. So let's get to it!
0:20- Ohio State basketball bad, Ohio State football players winning the Super Bowl good!
18:45- Birm talks about the past, present, and future of football recruiting, and also reveals his plan to make the process a lot more equitable.
32:20- Ask Us Anything! If Mike Nugent gets that shiny Super Bowl ring with the Bengals somehow, I fully expect the universe to fold in on itself and blink out of existence.
50:50- Wait, Ohio State basketball good again I guess! Also, CHEESE IT, IT'S THE FUZZ!
And that'll do it for this week's Dubcast, see you guys next week!
