One of the hot topics surrounding recruiting this year was coaches leaving just after National Signing Day. We saw a few different instances where an assistant coach waited until Signing Day or just after to leave for a new job. The most notable examples were Roquan Smith and UCLA and Mike Weber and Ohio State, but there were others as well.
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This brought up controversy over whether it was a dishonest practice for these coaches to hang around until Signing Day to help finish a recruiting class only to leave for a new job, when many recruits were coming to the program to work with a position coach they had developed a strong relationship with.
Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson spoke out against that practice to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ripping coaches that do that for being disingenuous.
"I don't think I would want to do business that way as a head coach," Johnson told the AJC. "You can't tell me they didn't know. I'm sure in that situation, they (head coaches told the assistants who were about to leave) 'OK, you need to stay with me until signing day. Let's finish this thing up.' Then that's the on the individuals, too. I would have a hard time personally misleading guys like that. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't let somebody working for me do it - if we knew that they weren't going to be here (after signing day)."
Johnson's main point is that these staffs are aware that an assistant is leaving and purposefully withhold that information from recruits. While Johnson feels that's wrong, he also mentioned that there are lies made during recruiting that need to be addressed as well.
"That's disingenuous. But I don't know if it's any more disingenuous than telling kids that a school is going to have their major or they're going to have that department or lying to them that way."
Recruiting is one of the dirtiest things about college football, and we'll see if there's any way to reform it to make staffs be more honest with kids.
