I read the conversation here about how we give out about 100 offers a year, about which offers are true offers, committable offers, non-committable offers, offers just to gauge interest, offers that aren't even offers at all, and I read several other threads that brought up the whole issue of offers... and wow, talk about confusing.

Anyway, I found a site that helped me get a better grasp on the whole issue -- Recruiting 101: Football Recruiting and Basketball Recruiting Advice for Parents, Coaches, and Players

It's a site written for recruits and their parents to help them understand the recruiting process.

Although I learned a lot by reading a lot of the articles on the site, I'll still admit that the whole offer issue isn't something I have a firm grasp on at all.

But here are some thoughts:

It's seems to me that if LSU gives a guy an offer, and he accepts, then he's a verbal commitment (whether the media ever finds out about it is a different story, NCAA rules prohibit the school from talking about it, right? -- and the recruit and his family might not want to tell anybody about it because they don't want to burn bridges with other schools in case LSU backs out on their offer for some reason -- injury, poor grades, negative publicity, poor senior year, better recruit comes along, whatever).

If LSU gives a guy an offer, and he doesn't immediately accept it, then we tell him that we'll give him some time to think about it, but if he doesn't accept our offer in a reasonable amount of time, then we are going to move on and try and offer someone else. So it's possible that, even if LSU has offered 100 or so kids, that it doesn't mean those offers are still out there... maybe the kid didn't show a great deal of interest, maybe the kid waited too long, whether, so we moved on. Of course, the fact LSU gave a kid an offer in the first place means that it's a kid that we thought highly enough of to give an offer to in the first place, and might still be on our wish list until we are satisfied with our total class of verbal commitments (the recruits who did accept our offer).

Finally, the whole verbal commitment thing isn't set in stone at all... as we've all seen from high profile stories of a recruit or a school backing out of the verbal commitment they made to each other (for example, RP). The stuff isn't set in stone until the signing period when the recruits actually sign the official LOI -- which is the binding contract between both the recruit and the school for the upcoming season.

Is all this about right, or no?

sounds great nice research and good insight

Eh, there's a lot of gray area with how coaches can talk about recruits. The Rivals & Scout guys have connections to inside the staff so they know when something happens.

"Silent commits" happen all the time - usually as a way to commit to an out of state school & keep the in-state pressure off or wait & make it public at some big event.

Recruits can't necessarily immediately accept the offer regardless.

Basically, the recruit has to try to commit in order to find out if he'll be allowed to, because it is a fluid situation & always changing based on how the board looks.

Correct.

5-Star CB Gabe Lynn has a offer and was recently visited by us.


Scout.com: Gabe Lynn Profile

Gabe Lynn - Football Recruiting


http://lsu.rivals.com/video.asp?section=fbrecruit&pkey=66843&vidtype=prospect&vidid=119556

Andrew Hatch could be ,didn`t he meet Crowton at BYU?

huh?

What are the thoughts on Alex Singleton from East St. John since he now has an offer?

I'd say there's a 90% chance he ends up in this class (only way he doesn't is if Opurem commits first, which is doubtful).

He's done very well as a RB according to his stats, but other than that I'm not sure. I'll have to watch some of his film.

What I'm wondering is did we extend a scholarship based on need at the position & lack of more/better prospects, or were we truly impressed with him... I think we would've liked a FB in this class, but it wasn't a necessity, which means that Singleton really earned his offer.