There is no way of sugar coating it: College football recruiting is a dirty business. The old saying, “if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying” definitely applies in recruiting and coaches these days will say just about anything to get kids to sign on the dotted line.
Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson isn’t very happy with some of the shady recruiting tactics going on these days and he says he wouldn’t allow similar tactics to occur at Tech.
Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson sees a good bit of recruiting’s underbelly with the school located in the heart of the shared footprint between the SEC and the ACC. One recent trend that does not sit well with the Yellow Jackets head coach is the coaching shuffle, mostly at the assistant coaching level, that takes place just after National Signing Day.
“I don’t think I would want to do business that way as a head coach,” Johnson told the AJC.
“You can’t tell me they didn’t know. I’m sure in that situation, they (head coaches told the assistants who were about to leave) ‘OK, you need to stay with me until signing day. Let’s finish this thing up.’ Then that’s the on the individuals, too.
“I would have a hard time personally misleading guys like that. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let somebody working for me do it – if we knew that they weren’t going to be here (after signing day).”
Johnson went on to mention other “disingenuous” moves on the recruiting trail, like “telling kids that a school is going to have their major or they’re going to have that department or lying to them that way.”
I can’t fault Johnson for being upset. There are very few programs left out there that run a clean program and for the few that do, they get bad raps because of the way other coaching staffs handle themselves.
This all goes back to the discussion of recruits knowing exactly what they are getting themselves into when they are choosing a school to sign with and make sure you aren’t signing with a school for a particular coach. They could be there today and gone tomorrow.