Signing Day is less than a month away and at least three prominent college football programs are in major shake-up mode. Pete Carroll leaves USC, Lane Kiffin leaves Tennessee to take over the Trojans, and Tommy Tuberville is trying to stabilize the situation in Lubbock while Mike Leach brings litigation against Texas Tech. There is a lesson to be learned here, and it is not a lesson for you or for me, unless you are a high school football star being recruited by an FBS University.
The lesson is this, college football coaches, no matter how much integity they may appear to have, are liars. By nature they must be, they may not like it, or even be very good at it, but make no mistake, they do it, each and every one of them.
Pete Carroll was telling USC recruits a month ago about the Trojan tradition, sitting in some stud linebackers living room telling his parents that they could trust him with their baby boy for four years...and then Hello Seattle! Kiffin, who was not exactly a Supreme Court Justice before showing up in Knoxville, now has blazed a trail of betrayal on his way back to the west coast, causing near riots on the Tennessee campus. In Texas a four-star quarterback from Denton, Scotty Young, wonders what his future holds now that none of the coaches who recruited him to Texas Tech are staying on.
If you are among the few who are gifted enough to trade your football talents for a four year education at a major university, let me offer this little bit of advice...choose a University for the school itself, the campus, the curriculum, the ability to expand your mind and your prospects as a future pro, be it in football or some other occupation. Do not marry yourself to a coach because coaches will leave, it is what coaches do. You must ask yourself, will I be happy here four years from now no matter who is coaching the football team? If you can say yes to that question, then you will have found your school. Be true to it.
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