How much stock do you put into a commitment these days?

I think of it as an inverse parabola (high on both ends, low in the middle). I think for the most part, guys who commit early usually mean it. It's a big deal when a kid decides to shut things down his sophomore year. Now when we get into a kid's senior year of high school, everyone is committing around him and it just seems fashionable to throw out a commitment. Look at the point in time where Matt Womack (lol, in line to be processed) committed. It was early in the fall, and it was probably easy to make a knee jerk decision in the thick of things. If a guy commits in the summer/fall before the signing day I really don't bet on it. Finally, when you get late in the process, if a guy commits he's probably serious about it because he could just as easily wait until NSD.

That's definitely a way to look at it, but you could say the same kid committing his sophomore year. He was wowed and it may be the first p5 school that shows him love. Then as it intensifies he backs off his commit there's definitely no set t guidelines but I think buck hit it right on the head

Yea, but what about the kid who commits early just to have the team he committed to pull his scholarship offer a week before nsd? Kids have a right to be apprehensive in my opinion because there is no certainty until they ink the contract.

Yeah the whole Matt Womack thing really infuriated me, I just didn't understand why even commit if you are that easy to sway away. But nothing to do about it now, just curious as to how to approach recruiting without geting steaming mad at these flips and phony commits.

I certainly think there is some stock in a player giving his word, and you just have to take it for face value as a verbal commitment with no true lock or binding agreement. From a recruiters perspective, you simply have to keep recruiting all players as if they are not committed until the first Wednesday for February. Unfortunately Until the first Wed. of Feb. There simply is nothing more you can get or do. Its totally miserable these days with players being such attention whores and tweeting crap all over the place like Brossette- "UT is giving me lots to think about". It just is what it is until the system changes and an early signing period is allowed.