Ok, let’s try another example. If Flynn nagel tore his ACL a week before signing day, would Duke (or any other school) honor the scholarship? Based on what Corbi is saying, MU would.
Cale Millen
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Or girl that drops a guy after 6 months of quasi engagement (and 8 months prior to the wedding and or one that drops him on the day of the wedding.
This is what you wrote, without equivocation:
“The kid gave his word and went back on it. That is a fact. That means something in my book. I was raised with the core belief that your word matters andhave raised my kids with that same core value.”
This is what you now write:
“An oral commitment in college football means nothing because both sides acknowledge that they can change their minds.”
You have established that you believe both that an oral commitment means something and that it means nothing. Exact words!
I think Millen and Nagel did the same thing, and are equally in the right ( though Nagel was a wee bit skeevy, but he played the game as it begs to be played). You believe that Millen and Nagel, who both made public verbal commitments, then publicly changed their minds, somehow did something different.
Has Duke regularly pulled offers? And wasn't it a day before the wedding so how do you count that as "just dating" while you count Millen and NU as engaged 8-10 months before signing day? How is that less egregious than what Millen did? It is disappointing for sure but I don't see it as any worse than what happened to Duke with Nagle.
We all want to feel NU is special in comparison to other schools and while in many areas NU is. But in this area, it is pretty gray.
Verbal contracts aren’t worth the paper they are written on-Samuel Goldwyn
If I read something on the Internet, it must be true- Abraham Lincoln
Offers to purchase beverages are as good as gold- FloridAlum
If I read something on the Internet, it must be true- Abraham Lincoln
Offers to purchase beverages are as good as gold- FloridAlum
Before you can say that, need to at least show examples of when Duke pulled offers and the circumstances. Even we have pulled offers. There was a CB whose offer was pulled when he failed to meet expectations academically so cannot say we do not pull them
And I am telling you that what Nagel and Mille did are not the same thing. If Duke did not explicitly guarantee that they would honor Nagel’s scholarship under all circumstances, why would they have a right to expect Nagel to honor his commitment under all circumstances? It’s not a commitment, it’s a placeholder. It’s an arrangement that is implicitly understood by both sides and that’s what makes it acceptable. NU’s approach is different and in my opinion more ethical, transparent and just flat out better. the existing system of oral commitments is a joke and i really wish the NCAA would take Fitz’s suggested changes to heart because it would make the system better for recruits.
I understand what you’re saying.
You’re saying that you believe that making a verbal commitment and giving one’s word are different things. Which is fine.
Weird to me, but fine.
Look we might be a lot better than some schools, some what better than others and about the same as still others. Does a commitment here mean more than at other schools? Sometimes for sure. All the time, probably not.
The kid is 17. Were you ready to be engaged or marry at 17? I would guess not. But that is what you expect from these 17 year olds. It is OK to be disappointed but he did bail with plenty of time left in the recruiting season. Imagine how it would have been if he bailed the day before as Nagle did.
I am saying that giving a verbal commitment in the context of college football recruiting, where the school’s commitment to the player is just as fleeting, is not the same as giving one’s word. I’d love to hear anecdotal evidence that other schools are explicitly offering the same deal to recruits that NU does but to date I have not heard of any other similar arrangement.
You entered this debate with far more certainty.
It strikes me that you forgot to add all the conditions under which this true.
Maybe next time you should spare the sermonizing when a 17-year-old makes a decision, even if you think it hurts your football team’s prospects three years down the road.
I have been very consistent. NU does it differently and NU’s commitments have an obligation to reciprocate. Millen did not hold up to his end of the bargain and that is very disappointing in my mind. You obviously see it differently and that is your right.
No, we don't agree that this is pretty much the case everywhere else in college football. There are a lot of shady programs out there, but are you going to tell me Miami OH is a shady program when it comes to recruiting? The house that Walker built? Flynn Nagel was not a place holder for Duke 24 hours before signing. He was committed and Duke was absolutely committed to him. There was no way Duke was pulling a scholarship from him 24 hours before signing date. And frankly, any time after he verbally committed to them.
Another thing - when you give your word, it means something whether you're giving it to a liar or an honest person. What others may do has nothing to do with the value of your promise to them. Your logic suggests that it's ok to break promises to people who lie and who are dishonest. I was taught and I teach my children that your word is bond to ANYONE you give it too. It further breaks down with the notion that NU is the only honest person out there. Again, I challenge anyone to show where Duke or Miami (OH - as apparently some people aren't able to understand why I'm singling these schools out) or Eastern Illinois (Sherrick McManus) or ALL of the other schools we've ever poached committed recruits from have engaged in the recruiting practices you have talked about. It's ludicrous to say NU is the only pristine school in a sea of dishonesty. And furthermore, why aren't we poaching from the schools who are shady in their recruiting practices? Why are we poaching from the innocent ones? We'd be better off poaching from Michigan, Stanford, and the SEC schools. At the end of the day, we poach from the weak, because we can and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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They are exactly the same thing. Stop writing a fairytale in an attempt to make your erroneous point. I will agree that verbal commitments are useless but that the system all programs must deal with. NU is not better then most other schools when it comes to recruiting and honoring their own commitments and those of others. In a word, NU does poach.
Every parent of a Northwestern player would tell you that NU is different when it comes to recruiting. Some have come on this message board and said just that. So, my friend, it is you who are wrong on this issue and unfortunately that is not surprising. I believe you are truly a Northwestern fan, but you sure have a very strange and negative way of expressing it.
The problem that I have is your inconsistency. Your word is your word. Be it in the form of a verbal commitment to a school or a promise to pick someone up. It is simple - it's 'your word.' And you are on record saying something about teaching your kids the value of their word. So, regardless of who, how or the difference of an offer, Nagel and every other kid poached by NU broke 'their word.' Just like Millen broke his word.
And if throwing out your lessons to your kids is intended to establish credibility, then it flunks when you start differentiating between lies and white lies. Is that what you really teach your kids - it is not ok to lie except...
Presenting the same argument 10 different ways sheds new light on the matter. — pawildcat
And now that you've said the same thing 10 different ways because you think you have your "a-ha" moment - can we let this thread die in peace?
I just tell the truth, while you just seem unable to admit that NU poaches kids from other programs, like everyone else does.
How many threads go on like this? Would you like a few examples? Thanks for the low-brow, low-hanging fruit attack on the guy that collects these nimble shots from the koolaid clan like a champ. Anytime Coral likes something, you know you are in bad company. IGNORE is your friend. No need to click on this thread - obviously, there is nothing worth reading here.
It completely does. You choose to ignore the tough parts including fact patterns involving NU pursuing players that have 'given their word.' Best I can tell, you believe some 'words' count, others are simply white lies. Nice double standard.
It has everything to do with this discussion. NU has poached numerous recruits who have given their verbal pledge to other schools. One in fact flipped one day before the signing day. You continue to argue that those were all ok but Millen doing the exact same thing isn't. You can't have it both ways, even though you continue to push your absurd argument.
There is an occasional case (same as us for many, 5% or less at most schools and maybe 10-15% at the most egregious violators like Stanford under Hairballs, Mich (now under Hairballs) , AL and other SEC schools) where the outcome of the way NU does it is significantly different. For most recruits it, it makes no difference. They verbally commit, sign on signing day etc. So stop trying to push how we are SO much different. For the schools we typically recruit against we aren't. Slightly better than many and no better than others but not massively different. Millen is a 17 year old kid who had an opportunity presented to him to play in front of family and friends.
Unless they had in their commitment "Unless NU offers". In that case, they would not have broken their word. And who knows, Millen might have had "Unless Oregon or Washington offers" in which case he did not break his.
Actually, I don't think Corbi is arguing that we don't poach kids (though he has in other threads). More recently, I think he accepts that we do, but that it's ok because we never made any promises to anyone not to and don't owe anything to anyone in refraining from such practices. And when we do, we only do so when we think a kid is open to other options - and somehow that makes it more ethical.
The argument here is different (and to his point, has little to do with whether NU poaches or not) and which I think he's struggling to lay out with any logical rationale is whether a kid like Nagel who flips 24 hours before signing day from a Duke is any more ethical than a Cale Millen who flips 8-10 months before signing day from NU. The argument he's making (which I don't buy) is that Nagel flipping is ok, because the commitment he made to Duke is only worth the commitment Duke has to him, which he believes is worthless relative to the commitment NU makes to its recruits. So, it's ok and totally ethical for Nagel to flip from Duke (or Marty from Miami OH) because those schools don't possibly honor their commitments to a committed kid in the same way as NU. I understand the argument, but I don't buy it at all.
1. There is nothing magical about NU's offer or what they tell a committed kid relative to ALL other schools. Some schools, perhaps or even definitely, but ALL schools, including Duke and Miami OH? No way. I won't pretend to speak for gcg, but I don't think he would even say that.
2. Again, your word is your word. If breaking verbal commitment is so unethical and is a reflection of one's character, then it doesn't matter if you do it at NU or you do it at Duke. Your word is your word regardless of who you give it to. One might also argue that doing it 8-10 months earlier giving a school a chance to find a replacement is far more ethical than doing it 24 hours before signing day.
3. I think it's too simplistic to say once you commit to NU or any other school, you're morally locked into anything regardless of what an NU offer means. Nothing is ever final in anything until you sign on the dotted line. Shit happens. New information comes in that changes your perspective completely - are you going to damn a kid for changing what he thought was a convicted view, if it's in his best interests? Are you going to make kid follow through with a verbal promise he made that he in all likelihood made with full intentions of following through on, if he later decides it was a mistake?
4. You can talk all you want about the NU offer meaning more than other offers, but at the end of the day, you're still forcing kids to make decisions, perhaps prematurely, if there are limited spots and they need to make a decision to make sure they have a spot. So, in the end, the deal is not equal to the kid and to the program - even with the NU offer.
