re: John Diarse gets his offer

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Who is Hootie?

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Read what you wrote and tell me what I was supposed to gain from this dummy.

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Posters that matter understand perfectly what I'm saying, mostly the ones I previously responded to.

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Most people when pushed enough will go another direction.

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If a program's Junior Day offer is not sufficient for a potential recruit, you are begging to collect the wrong kind of kids

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You'll never hear a college football prospect say patience is a virtue.

In the constantly accelerating recruiting world, prospects want their scholarship offers yesterday. These days, they say simply being the first to offer is reason enough to consider a school and not offering early is a sign of disrespect.

Case in point: four-star tailback William Mahone. The Youngstown (Ohio) Austintown Fitch prospect was offered a scholarship by Tennessee in June, long after schools including Penn State and Michigan State extended offers during his junior season. The delay put doubt in Mahone's eyes.

"I've been talking to [the Vols] since my junior year when I started getting my offers, but they never pulled the trigger, I guess because they were looking for something else," the nation's No. 14 running back said.

The wait-and-see approach used by some programs like Tennessee can turn into a wait-and-oh-he's-gone result despite a coach's best intentions. Mahone concedes that the SEC is the best conference in the nation, but he's not even sure he'll explore his one option there.

"It would be nice to get down there but if I can't, then it's not that big of a priority to me," he said.

Perhaps Tennessee's recent struggles (6-7 last season and NCAA penalties looming) continue to be a challenge in recruiting more than late offers. Perhaps not.

But all Mahone knows is he didn't get an offer until just recently and it makes him wonder just how important he is to the Vols.

"A little bit, but [Tennessee assistant] coach [Peter] Sirmon always called and checked up on me," Mahone said. "But yeah, it's kind of a concern."

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"If you don't [offer early], you can find yourself playing catch-up with a recruit," Dooley said. "Everybody wants to be that first team to offer, but I don't think at the end of the day that has a lot of significance. But you also don't want to be so late in the game that the player feels like you didn't have an interest in him.

"I don't think ultimately that's why a player goes to a school. I think it will keep that school in the game a little longer on some guys, but it's not often that a player chooses a school because it's the first offer."

"Our resources have to get spread a little bit," Dooley said. "When you're in a state that has a deep recruiting base, you can keep your area pretty tight. The coaches get a good feel for that area.

"I think back to my times as an assistant at LSU where I had a very small area that had a lot of players every year. Because of that you form a lot of relationships with the coaches. You know the freshmen, the sophomores and the juniors and seniors that are good on the football team. It's hard to do that if you're kind of spread out thin and you can't go back to that school every time you go to that area."

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The natural inclination is to feel sorry for the players, but that's too simplistic. Coaches are also under new pressures with the advancement of the recruiting calendar and, in the SEC, annual scholarship limitations. Coaches have to be ready to offer scholarships early, which means evaluating prospects' character as well as their athleticism.

"The family members are trying to get their kids scholarships and they're panicking," said one coach in a BCS conference. "It has changed the game completely. You better get a relationship with a player when he's a sophomore or you'll be out of the game because they get their feelings hurt so quick. 'Why did you offer me late?' They don't want to hear that we're trying to cover our bases and get to know who you are, all that kind of stuff. They say, 'You should have offered my kid already.'"

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Georgia coach Mark Richt said not offering an in-state prospect can put the Bulldogs in a permanent trail position for a prospect.

"If you get your class nailed down a year in advance and all of a sudden some of those guys didn't keep progressing like you thought and some other guys came up, [you say] 'Man, I wish I had waited and offered that kid because I like this guy better than I like that guy.' Some people find a way to dump that guy and take that [other] guy. At Georgia, if we offer and he commits to us, we're not dumping him."

"What happens sometimes is some out-of-state schools, they'll go blazing through the state offering a lot of guys," he said.

Which puts the Bulldogs in a tough situation. If they offer early, they can be stuck with a player who didn't develop as the coaches hoped or expected he would. If they offer late, a player gets his feelings hurt. As for the out-of-state program, it can offer early with little repercussions. If a prospect doesn't develop, it stops calling the player and he gets the message. No formal announcement need be made. The scholarship was never technically pulled.

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