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March 2005 Varsityedge.com newsletter
Many of you know I am fairly strict with companies and services I recommend and in most cases for every one service I may mention, 10 others have contacted me and been turned down. Many parents contact me with financial aid questions and I have been searching for a useful tool to help with the process and think I found one. Money4college123.com is an online financial aid tool that walks parents through the process step by step in an online tutorial. Money4college123.com can save parents time, money and reduces the stress of the financial aid process. The system sends emails to parents and students on the appropriate dates as to what needs to be done, and how best to do it. Money4college123.com also provides financial aid history on over 2,600 colleges. The program provides both written information and audio instructions and has organized the financial aid process into small steps to be completed at your pace. Form more information, please visit - www.money4college123.com
You can also read an interview with the founder here. Read Interview
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
I thought this was a really good article. It has the classic examples of mistakes people make such as assuming their job is to simply play high school sports and a coach’s job is to find them. I laughed at the service that sends your resume to 12 schools of your choice. What is the point of that? If you have to select the schools on your own, what are you paying for? Send the information yourself (save $99.00) and follow up with a phone call to the coach and I guarantee you will get more out of that than having a service send information for you. - Read Article
This is an article about a recruit being shunned at D1 late in the game and finding success at D3. Read Article
NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
- Queens University of Charlotte (NCAA Division 2, Carolinas-Virginia Athletic Conference) recently broke ground on a new multi-purpose athletic center to be shared with the town. Queens will use the center for 11 of its 16 varsity sports. The new facilities will include track and field, soccer, lacrosse, tennis, softball, and baseball.
- The other side of college sports. Due to budget shortages The Bridgewater State College (MA) men’s basketball team wasn’t able to participate in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). The ECAC games are an eight-team tournament for teams that meet the season-record requirement but fail to qualify for the NCAA tournament.
ODD’S N ENDS
The Lexington Minuteman (my local town paper), reported in February that the girl’s varsity soccer coach was not having his contract renewed for the coming year. The team went 5-11 this year but played several inexperienced underclassmen due to injuries to other players. The coach received 44 “effective” scores out of 45 categories related to his job, basically the highest score you can receive and was strongly recommended by the AD to continue coaching the team. Apparently several parents bypassed the AD and went to the principal and complained about the coach. Rather than talk to any other parents or players on the team or the AD for that matter, the principal decided to not extend the coaches contract. Apparently the only complaint from parents made public was that the coach received a yellow card in a game and because of that he was not representing the town in a positive manner. That should tell you a little about the town I grew up in! My guess is that a few girls weren’t getting the playing time they thought they deserved and they had their parents shake down the Principal and ultimately had the coach kicked out of town. I understand a principal is in charge of all positions at a high school, but isn’t the Athletic Director in charge of making sure the right coaches are hired and retained. In this case, why even have an AD if he or she isn’t allowed to actually do their job! I asked another coach if the players are allowed to fill out an evaluation and he said players are given a 65 question evaluation that not only contains about 45 too many questions but some questions are difficult to understand and by the time the kids get through 15 or 20 questions, they are already bored and distracted. Ahh, the public school system! If I am a new coach interviewing for this job, my first, last and only question is, what is the review process for my position when the season concludes.
A Memphis high school coach was convicted of arranging a $150,000 payment for himself in order to deliver a prized football recruit from his high school team to a certain college.
I was on a message board in March and an unsuspecting parent was researching contact rules for college coaches and high school athletes. The topic was D3 contact rules, and the parent mistakenly was using contact rules from the D1 manual assuming that they were the same for every division. Each sport and each division, in most cases, has different contact rules. Make sure you are using the correct rules for the correct division. In the case of D3, a college coach can call you at any time in high school.
Before the start of the 2004 season Derek Lowe, the former pitcher of the Boston Red sox rejected a 3-year 27 million dollar contract from the Boston Red Sox and basically said the offer was an insult. He decided to pitch out his 2004 contract and promptly went 14-12 last season with a 5.42 ERA, the 3rd highest ERA in the American League for a starter and the third year in a row his wins went down and his ERA went up. Lowe was not offered a contract with the Red Sox following the 2004 season and ultimately signed with the LA Dodgers for the same amount of money plus an extra year. In a February Boston Globe Article, Lowe said how he and several other Red Sox teammates last season used to rag on Curt Schilling for showing up at the park so early and being dressed by 2PM on days Schilling was scheduled to pitch. Schilling is famous for his books and computers that contain data and pitching/hitting charts on every batter in the major leagues and he mentally prepares for each batter on game-day. Perhaps that is why Curt Schilling is regarded as one of the hardest working, most prepared, and best pitchers in the game of baseball today, and why Derek Lowe isn’t any of those things! Lowe today still wonders why he wasn’t brought back to the Red Sox. It’s pretty obvious to me, he doesn’t work as hard as the best players in the game even when he had a chance to play next to them and learn from them.
You can’t tackle what you can’t catch. Last year I wrote about the impressive performance of Darren Sproles a running back for the Kansas State Wildcats who shredded Oklahoma for 235 rushing yards on 22 carries and 88 receiving yards on 3 receptions last year. At 5’7” 180, Sproles is not your typical bruising back, but happens to bench press 411 pounds and squats 836 pounds. Sproles followed up his 2003 season with 1400 yards and 11 TD’s on the ground this year. Sproles capped the 2004 season with 100 offensive yards in the senior bowl by only touching the ball 8 times. While Sproles is vastly undersized, even for college, he has blazing speed and quickness (and strength), three traits that many college coaches would die for. While some schools won’t recruit you because of your size, there are many other qualities coaches look for besides size. Find those coaches and you will find your fit.
Didn’t get into Princeton? Well, you can always transfer there. Or can you? I thought this was a joke when I first say it about two years ago. Read Article
Sooooooo close. I was reading a high school message board and someone says a teammate of theirs scored a 1590 on the SAT because they didn’t know what the word “Watershed” meant. It’s a good bet he never forgets that word again. Go look it up!
On a page on varsityedge.com, we have a statistic that says in 2003, Yale rejected 100 kids with a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT test. Someone remarked, “This is just frightening to me. It's like winning the Heisman and then not getting drafted; what else are you supposed to do?” (Didn’t that happen to Charlie Ward?) Actually, there are a lot of other things you can do to distinguish yourself from other students!
In a February Boston Globe article on the demise of public high school hockey in Massachusetts, Northeastern Hockey coach Bruce Crowder was asked the last time he recruited a player from a public high school. He couldn’t remember. His current roster has no public school players, so it’s been at least 4 years I guess? Another player said “no one would find me if I played high school hockey.” Yes, no one will find you unless you contact them!
I recently read an article with this passage regarding a college athlete…
She took the initiative in "recruiting" herself. As a high school junior, she made the initial contact by sending out letters that detailed her stats and the awards she won, even going so far as to send in a video of one of her softball games.
This isn’t “going so far”, this is the ABSOLUTE BARE MINIMUM you need to do in your recruiting process.
MAKING THE DECISION
I had the opportunity to meet one of the top recruited lineman in the country in February that signed with Virginia recently named Eugene Monroe. I also met the personal trainer of the team and was discussing the recruiting process with him. He said choosing Virginia was the right decision for Eugene, a good decision, and a decision made with a lot of thought involved, and it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing on signing day. Eugene took all his official visits and made the decision to attend Virginia last year after evaluating the pro’s and con’s of each school he visited. The trainer told me story of how Eugene was talking to one of his friends on the day of signing day and asked where he was going to sign, the friend replied, “I have no idea yet.” Eugene couldn’t believe that on signing day his friend still had not made up his mind and wondered what criteria he was even using to make the decision?
NCAA NEWS
The Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse (please don’t say – “who is that?”) has raised the fee to register from $30 to $32. I believe you can still request a fee waiver. Please see www.ncaaclearinghouse.net or your guidance counselor for more information.
FINANCIAL AID
Massachusetts recently held a financial aid planning day that allowed parents and students to get free advice on the financial aid process and help in filling out the FAFSA form. One of the things volunteers were encouraging was for parents to fill out the FAFSA form by May 1st. According to one assistant director of financial aid that I spoke to recently, May 1st will in my cases be to late. “We need all FAFSA information in by February 15th since we need to make application decisions in March and we use FAFSA information to determine how institutional aid is awarded, so you cannot wait that long and many schools will be the same way. It won’t really hurt your federal aid award, but our institutional aid gets depleted rather quickly.” Apparently May 1st, is a little late!
NLI
I re-posted this article because the link was no longer available and I thought it was important. There are a several things that bother me about this article and they mainly deal with the mother. The article leads us to believe that the mother did all this research and had all this knowledge, but had she spent 4 minutes on www.national-letter.org, she would have found the following pieces of information which is clearly outlined in several documents on the website…
The National Letter of Intent program is not administered by the NCAA. Rather, the National Letter of Intent program is administered by the Collegiate Commissioners Association (CCA).
Eligibility Requirements. This NLI shall be declared null and void if, by the opening day of classes in the fall of 2005, I have not met (a) the institution’s requirements for admissions, (b) its academic requirements for financial aid to athletes, or (c) the NCAA requirements for freshman financial aid (NCAA Bylaw 14.3) or the junior college transfer requirements.
When I sign a National Letter of Intent what do I agree to do?
When you sign the National Letter of Intent you agree to attend for one academic year the institution listed on the Letter in exchange for that institution awarding athletics financial aid for one academic year.
Do I sign a National Letter of Intent every year?
No, while under NCAA rules you must be notified annually regarding whether your athletics aid has been renewed, you only sign an NLI when you first enroll in a four-year institution or if you are a four-two-four transfer student.
Not only did she not fully understand what she was doing, but she was allowed to share “what she didn’t know” in the form of recruiting seminars and packets for other parents and recruits. Was there not one high school coach or athletic administrator that knew more than this woman at her son’s high school?? Ohio State seems partly to blame for a lack of communication in this case, but there is one huge question that was never addressed in this article. DID THE FAMILY EVEN RECEIVE AN ACCEPTANCE LETTER IN THE SPRING FROM THE SCHOOL? I am going to guess no. Even though you are a recruited athlete and sign an NLI, you still submit an application and receive either an acceptance letter or rejection letter from the college. Never once does the mother say she received an acceptance letter, which would lead me to believe her son wasn’t accepted to the school, which would be a pretty clear indication that you aren't going to attend. Ohio State’s problem is they waited too long to resolve this matter (according to the article). On a football team with 85+ players and a lot of uncertainty, I doubt that it was simply because they had another player at the position as teams like this have 5 players at every position. If a scholarship offer was extended to this player, it’s a good bet that (1) he had the talent to play there and (2) the school wanted him to play there. What happened after that is anybody’s guess.
A signed letter-of-intent no guarantee for athlete
By Steve Gorten
Staff Writer
Posted February 2 2005
Fort Lauderdale · Helen Kennedy never expected what would happen to her son after he signed the papers that were supposed to secure his future.
It was National Signing Day 2004, and like many Broward and Palm Beach County football recruits will do today, Stranahan running back Dennis Kennedy grabbed a pen and proudly inked his name.
Ohio State, 2002 national champs. He had prepared for this moment -- rushing for 967 yards and seven TDs as a senior -- and so had his mom.
Helen Kennedy, who jokes that friends call her "Nosy" because she'll "dig it out" when she wants to know something, took precautions to prevent a mix-up. She perused the Internet and found a "wealth of information" about just what her son would be signing -- a national letter-of-intent.
"I wanted to know about the process," she said.
She knew it so well by that day that she said she prepared packages for Stranahan's other potential recruits and held a seminar for parents about it. So why now is her son at Akron University, his contract with Ohio State voided, copies of it sitting in her house and in Stranahan coach Keith Skinner's office as harsh reminders?
"Even though kids sign the national letter-of-intent, there's no guarantee," Helen Kennedy said. "That's the bottom line.
"If you have an upcoming scholar-athlete, you need to really do your homework."
RULES AND REGULATIONS
Just what are these papers that prospective student-athletes sign on the first Wednesday in February?
The biggest misconception is that the national letter-of-intent is tied to the NCAA, but the governing body has nothing to do with NLOI rules and regulations. It's actually administered by the Collegiate Commissioners Association.
A group of college athletic conference commissioners presented a plan for the NLOI at the 1961 NCAA Convention to curb what it deemed as nasty recruiting practices. Three years after two efforts were voted down at the convention, seven conferences and eight independent schools agreed to create the NLOI. Today more than 50 conferences and 500 institutions participate.
According to the Web site www.national-letter.org, the NLOI is a signed agreement that binds a student-athlete to an institution for one academic year in return for financial aid. Some mistake it as a four-year guarantee, but the school must decide whether to extend it each year. Among the rules:
A letter is valid only if signed after 7 a.m. on National Signing Day. Once a prospect has signed the letter in triplicate -- one copy for the recruit to keep, two copies to go to the college, which will pass on one to its conference -- he or she can no longer be recruited by other schools participating in the NLOI program. All Division I schools, except for the service academies, half of the Patriot League and the Ivy League schools, are members.
An NLOI may be signed before the prospect receives final academic certification from the NCAA Clearinghouse, but it's valid only if the athlete is later deemed a qualifier.
An NLOI prevents a signee from playing elsewhere for two years unless the original school gives him a release. Even if granted a release, which happens often, the student-athlete must sit out one season at the new school unless he or she wins an eligibility appeal heard by the national letter-of-intent steering committee, composed of five conference commissioners.
Chaminade-Madonna football coach Mark Guandolo said college coaches regularly review the rules and regulations with recruits when they make "house visits" before signing day, often after the player commits. But Ely quarterback Carlton Jackson Jr. said that didn't happen with him -- he planned to review it himself. Former Suncoast standout Da-Juan Morgan, who committed to Ohio State but signed with North Carolina State after the Buckeyes told him late he didn't meet their academic standards, said many recruits, including him, weren't aware of all NLOI guidelines.
NO GUARANTEE
Ohio State officials won't comment on Kennedy's case, adhering to a policy concerning students who never enroll, sports information director Steve Snapp said. Helen Kennedy will talk, though.
She says OSU offered her son a scholarship Feb. 3. Dennis signed the next day -- National Signing Day -- with his dad there. Two days later, his dad was hospitalized. On March 3, Kennedy's dad died from cancer. Late June, things got worse for Dennis. One of the coaches called him to say "he wasn't going to make it."
His grades and ACT score, while meeting NCAA Clearinghouse standards, were too low for Ohio State. Helen Kennedy said she understood the NLOI was contingent on athletes qualifying academically, but nowhere were OSU's specific standards printed on the contract. While they had copies of his transcripts, they never told her of a potential problem during the process either, she said.
"It was a blow," she said.
When Dennis told her of the phone call, she called the Buckeyes back. No answer.
"It was a nightmare," she said. "We were just holding out that everything was going to work out."
She said she left numerous messages with nearly everyone in the athletic department -- at the office, on their cell. "I got a lot of hogwash and being passed around." When she finally spoke to someone in the compliance office, she was assured "things are in motion" for a resolution. Two weeks before players were to report for fall practice, she received notification in writing that the contract was void. She still hasn't heard from coach Jim Tressel about the matter, she said.
Helen Kennedy has her suspicions -- that Ohio State "over-recruited" and later gave her son's spot to another recruit it coveted -- and said two other players who are now Dennis' teammates at Akron had similar problems with other schools.
"We learned we were not the only ones," she said.
Helen Kennedy calls Ohio State's nullification of his NLOI "bogus." Friends encouraged her to research the average GPA and ACT/SAT scores for OSU's 2004 incoming class and appeal to the NLOI steering committee.
But "We had already been through enough," she said. This past weekend, she attended Akron's football banquet. Dennis Kennedy, who redshirted this season, is happy there, she said.
Lack of understanding about the national letter-of-intent isn't uncommon.
"I've tried to just encourage parents to really do their research, ask about everything, like academic standards," she said. "It's a recruiting game. Some kids get hurt."
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