https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=19371472

This act is in line with virtually every year of BYU recruiting ever.

I'm not even going to grace these reactionary sky are falling response posts with the curtesy of looking up all of the kids who have committed and then decommitted once their stock rose high no matter who the coach is. Doing so would indicate that I feel the need to prove this fact through research. It is so well established that I will allow those who are crying over some of the most recent decommits to find it for themselves. That way I am giving you an out to quietly save face and say nothing when you discover or realize that what I have posted is incredibly true.

I gave this kid about a 30% chance of coming to the soon after he committed. When players commit years in advance and they don't even realize how good they are it is natural and should be expected that they would at least open up their recruitment just to see how they feel. I LOVE BYU but I would probably do the same and encourage any kid of mine to make sure their choice is the right one. This is especially true if the kid is sitting in the ESPN top 300 and could have real chance of playing pro. Big surprise that many kids flip when they see they could end up at USC, Ohio St. or Alabama etc. That doesn't even include every other option. Lets not be simpletons. Most kids are going to look very hard at making reconsiderations when those offers come in.

I never even thought about going to another school. BYU was always the #1. I would not have even dream differently. However, I never thought Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford and Princeton were options. If all the sudden I had some recruiters telling me that I was going to get an academic full-ride scholarship (living expenses included) to one of these school if I committed to attend, then I definitely would have stopped and reaccessed my choice. No question. I can almost guarantee that I would have taken that offer unless the Holy Ghost or an angel constrained me otherwise. The opportunity would seem that huge.

USC, Ohio St. or Alabama etc are the Harvards, Yales and Princetons of College Football. The opportunity for post undergrad notoriety is just too huge to pass up. Certainly too huge to just dismiss out of hand. That doesn't mean BYU is the wrong choice, just that most will choose differently. I know several kids who went to BYU on partial academic scholarship rather than going to an Ivy league school where they had similar scholarships. Everyone of them made the choice entirely because BYU would save them grundle of money. Where financial costs are equal or nearly so, basic economics says that the individual will choose the better product. From most stand points BYU is not viewed as the best product in athletics or academics. Please understand that this is no knock on BYU but rather an acknowledgement that most of the academic world would not put Harvard out of BYU's league and most of the football world would put Alabama out of BYUs league. Perception does matter and it is the primary thing we are recruiting against.

Sure, if we become consistently great our recruits will improve, but just recognize it will take at least 10 years (probably much much more) of that greatness to make any impact on lasting impressions compared to other schools we are pit up against. Utah has been pretty good (for almost 13 years) and put tons of kids in the NFL and they have really only seen improved recruiting that last 3 or 4 years. How improved? They still don't come near breaking the top 30. See the forest through the trees people. Be honest with yourself about the recruiting situation. Stop acting like changing the name of a coach or two is going to secure us all these kids. It won't. These kids are complicated people not swordfish a professional deep sea fisher could guarantee make it to your dinner table.

The list of BYU blue chip commit follow throughs is tiny compared to decommits and the list is even shorter when these players committed before they knew they were a blue chip recruits. This is the truth, pure and simple.