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saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - Printable Version

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saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - ChicagoCard - 02-03-2012

Jontrey Tillman verbally committed to S.U. (saw him as a DB) early but suddenly got word in January that he wasn't accepted. He had been believed to be a good candidate to get in. (I think this was discussed here around that time.) This caused some negative comments in various places. At the end of this article "Player burned after committing to Stanford" (Jack Carey, Gannett News Service) the player's coach says...

"I suppose (Stanford) might not have renewed his scholarship if he had ended up going there, so this is better than that."

Doesn't this seem like an odd comment? Why would there be such a worry in general. Probably nothing to do with this particular recruit but a year ago there was a study on criminal convictions of players at 2010's top 25 teams. Only Stanford and TCU came out looking really good, and it came out that TCU does background checks on all recruits. Just seems a curious comment to make.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - fullmetal - 02-03-2012

The player's coach seemed to be the one doing the talking from Tillman's side when news of the non-acceptance broke.  He claims that admissions had JT's test scores and such for months and should have informed him earlier if they were going to deny him admission.  The Admissions Office, of course, did not comment on the veracity of that claim.  This might be a case of an overeager coach playing the spin game and throwing out claims of sour grapes.

Tillman is headed to Houston.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - Leftcoast - 02-03-2012

Some opponent boards were accusing Stanford of using admissions to knock out lower rated early commits presumably to make room for higher rated folks we were chasing.

Sounds unlikely to us but that is what this HS coach is hinting.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - washingtonismoney - 02-03-2012

(02-03-2012, 04:22 PM)centralcafan link Wrote:Doesn't this seem like an odd comment? Why would there be such a worry in general. Probably nothing to do with this particular recruit but a year ago there was a study on criminal convictions of players at 2010's top 25 teams. Only Stanford and TCU came out looking really good, and it came out that TCU does background checks on all recruits. Just seems a curious comment to make.

That's not what he's talking about. It's common practice in SEC country to take advantage of the year-by-year nature of athletic scholarships to cut the bottom of their classes out. That's how SEC schools manage to take 25 kids year after year. He assumes that Stanford operates the same way; obviously, it doesn't.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - ChicagoCard - 02-03-2012

Interesting. The SEC commissioner Mike Slive suggested a number of potential reforms at some sort of traditional pre-season SEC event. I remember that one dealt with increasing required gpa and another was something about making schools give more of a guarantee in granting the full term of a scholarship to players. Among others, the former 49er South Carolina coach hated the idea.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - 81alum - 02-03-2012

I find the idea that a student (who is otherwise making good academic progress) could essentially be kicked out of school so he could be replaced with a better athlete to be positively revolting.

How common is that?

I'd love to see a list of schools that do that and how often.  Any in the PAC-12?

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - washingtonismoney - 02-03-2012

(02-03-2012, 09:30 PM)81alum link Wrote:How common is that?

I'd love to see a list of schools that do that and how often.  Any in the PAC-12?

It's hard to tell because evidence is anecdotal.

Here's one example about how it's hard to tell: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509901468451306.html

Generally the Pac-12 and Big 10 don't participate in this, but UCLA (which signed about 10 more players than they have available scholarships) definitely will in the future and USC probably will (it's hard to tell whether the spate of transfers this winter was the result of players leaving or being pushed.)

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - CompSci87 - 02-03-2012

Pressuring someone to take a medical scholarship is hardly "kicking out of school." More like kicking off the team but continuing to fund the student's education -- quite a different thing.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - washingtonismoney - 02-03-2012

(02-03-2012, 10:20 PM)CompSci87 link Wrote:Pressuring someone to take a medical scholarship is hardly "kicking out of school." More like kicking off the team but continuing to fund the student's education -- quite a different thing.

That's correct. Probably a bad example for the overall point, but appropriate to illustrate some of the scholarship machinations are in a gray area. Here's a more clearcut point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_hw4_kJ7HY

There was another example where an offensive lineman found out he didn't have a spot a few days before school began, but I can't find it handy immediately.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - StannyBoy - 02-03-2012

I don't know what happened with Tillman but to get turned down so late was weird when it sounds like he applied fairly early. But Stanford does pull scholarship offers. MLB Daniel Davis had his pulled last year and he ended up at Penn. Harbaugh did this other times too. There was an OG from FL I think and he ended up at Wisconsin.

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - pefloresjr - 02-03-2012

At first I thought that "pulling" a player's scholarship was terrible.  Then I remembered that my private scholarship was only renewed if I met the gpa requirements.  Playing a college sport is a highly competitive endeavor and to keep your scholarship you have to make the team.  If you don't make the team, you no longer have a full athletic scholarship.  Every person who has engaged in a competitive activity, whether in sports or not, knows that the decisions about who makes the squad may not be entirely objective and fair.  There are no guarantees.  Since athletes are still admitted Stanford students, I assume they would get a financial aid offer with a mix of aid and loans along with their expected family contribution.  The same would have happened to me if I had lost my scholarship.  Obviously not making the team would cause a student to transfer if his or her athletic goals are that important to the student.  However, the student's opportunity to meet educational goals are not taken away because he or she loses a full scholarship.  Stanford's regular financial aid offers are pretty good for everybody.  In any event, I don't think this is a widely used option at Stanford and I think most scholarship athletes get their four years of opportunity. 

Cheers,
Pete F. 

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - Farm93 - 02-04-2012

(02-04-2012, 09:07 AM)garvin link Wrote:ESPN did a story on this practice in 2010 that suggest it's very widespread in the SEC. I believe the story is still kicking around on YouTube or one of those sites if you want to look for it. It used to the story of a kid downsized by LSU late in the summer, when it was too late to find another school with a scholarship open, as its framework.

The SEC has it covered on all aspects of this scholarship game.  Many SEC schools routinely accept 30+ commits each year.  It is a yield game.  Many of the commits are flirting with the NCAA minimums, so the schools want to get more than 25 banking on the idea that several will be lost.  The problem is that sometimes more than 25 meet the minimums.  Forcing some to JC or FCS programs when they could have gone to any number of other top programs.

Then 25 per year *4 years = 100.  100>85.  It is not that hard to see that schools that routinely welcome 25 players each year need to get some to leave early.  Some will jump, or try to jump, to the NFL.  Some will have medical issues.  Others will want to transfer, quit etc.  But if all of that is not enough the schools throughout the SEC have rich histories of bumping the weakest players.  This is why many want the NCAA to force 4 year scholarship offers.  The coaches can leave at a moments notice, but the players are stuck and are penalized if they try to leave early.  And despite that the schools can ruthlessly terminate support after any given year.

Shaw addressed this idea recently by saying that Stanford has not done that so an NCAA rule on 4-year requirements would not really impact Stanford.

At a minimum every school that wants to cut players from the team should be required to remove then from the roster permanently, but still provide an option for financial support academically.  That sounds nice, I guess, but I am sure many probably don't really want a degree from Alabama or LSU even if they could catch-up and complete the academic program in 4 years.  But that should be offered, at a minimum.  IMHO

Re: saga of one-time commit Jontrey Tillman - 81alum - 02-04-2012

Pressuring someone to take a medical scholarship may be dishonest and unethical, but it does not rise to the same level of sleaze that I had in mind. 

I also have no problems with taking someone off a team if they are not performing well, provided that some alternative resources are available to allow them to complete their academic degree.

What I abhor is the idea that some universities could be discarding students when they don't live up to football expectations.  Given that the primary mission of a university is providing students with an education,  I think a university has an obligation to see that any student it admits has a reasonable opportunity to complete a degree.  A University is not a corporation, after all, and football players are not employees that should be fired for poor performance.

So a football player removed from a football scholarship does not trouble me so much as the possibility that such a player might be abandoned and forced to drop out of school.  I guess that should have been my question--whether that kind of exploitation was happening.

There are many other kinds of issues, though, in removing a player from a team.  At the university where I teach our athletes get all kinds of academic advantages--special counseling, constant monitoring of their academic performance, etc. in an effort to improve the school's lousy APR.  If a student is removed from the team all of that academic support vanishes and they would be far more likely to fail academically.

For all these reasons I think that requiring scholarships to be awarded for four years (subject to adequate academic progress)  would be the ethical and academically sound thing to do, or at a minimum requiring that players who lose their athletic scholarships receive comparable financial aid packages.