It is the time of year when we Pitt fans spend way too much time and energy on an issue with questions attached that truthfully won’t be answered for another two or three years. Recruiting. Let’s talk about that and by ‘recruiting’ I mean high school recruiting – not transfers which are a different subject altogether.
One of the things Pitt fans love to do is point to a recruit’s “offers” as proof that the current crop of recruits are better or worse than other crops of recruits. We are hearing that crowed from the mountaintop this season with our 2018 class being filled with only three star kids from side to side (I’d say top to bottom but they are all the same star ranking).
I have written extensively about the smoke and mirrors surrounding recruits stating what offers they have received from what schools. My advice – take almost everything with a grain of salt and here’s why. A “scholarship offer” comes in a singular formal letter from the university’s head coach to the player and his parents definitely offering a scholarship in return for the student/athlete’s athletic talents and academic work.
What an offer is not is the hundreds of letters schools send out or the hundreds of phone calls and texts the football staff generates saying ‘We want you to play for the University of XXXX” Those contacts are not worth the paper they are printed on.
Below is an example of a ‘formal’ scholarship offer and only a limited amount of these go out from any individual school – as opposed to hundreds of ‘so-called offers’ a school generates. Pitt had well over 200 ‘offers’ out according to Rivals and you know they weren’t offering all 200+ kids scholarships. A good rule of thumb with this? if Pitt offers 5* players out on the West Coast you know they are just doing it to see Pitt listed on these blue chip kids’ offer sheets… it is an advertisement as it were.
Notice the phrase “I want to formally extend a scholarship offer to you“. If that ain’t in the correspondence a HS player receives it truly is not a scholarship offer.
pittpov.com 