Revoked Scholarships

[EastStang]

There is an overlying rules system in place which under NCAA rules say that the recruit cannot accept the offer until February. Under contract law, unless there is a valid acceptance an offer can be revoked. Any acceptance before February is at best a revocable acceptance or an intent to accept and is not an acceptance since it is illegal to accept an offer before the February signing date. Therefore, no contract exists because there never was a valid acceptance of the offer and the offer can be withdrawn. Now, if the Court were to day that the NCAA rules are invalid (not sure how you can do that in this circumstance except to say that they are anti-competitive in some way), then you might be able to have a valid acceptance. Of course we know that the NCAA rules are not meant to protect the student, but the institutions that make up the NCAA.

[SMUMan02]

Premise:

1. School extends a Recruit a WRITTEN (or oral as in the article below) offer of a scholarship
2. Coach tells recruit that it is binding only if he does not take other official visits(very common)
3, Recruit accepts offer and in RELIANCE upon a school's representations doesn't accept other offers to visit other schools
4. Recruit is fully qualified
5. Is the university required to honor the offer;


Interesting comments by some law professors in the following article. I think its time that the NCAA do something about this. Expony18 could probably answer this in a second-because he is so emerced in unilaterl and bilateral contracts and promissory estoppel that he barely has time to post.


http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/w ... i.recruit/

well in my opinion the NCAA thinks they are untouchable, and because of this mind set Universities and coaches think they are untouchable when it comes to offering scholarships. My sports and entertainment law society has been debating this a lot over the past few months, and it seems to go against your basic concepts of contract law and public policy. This will be an interesting case to follow. Unfortunately I think I know how it is going to end.

Forget the legalese CYA...is a written offer to a recruit a legally binding contract or merely just an offer subject to withdrawal? Forget the "tradition" of honoring the offer...is it a contract...or not?

The simplest answer is maybe. As soon as there has been an offer and an acceptance (prior to revocation of the offer) then a K exists. The real problem here is the concept of National Signing Day. If not for that, and recruits could sign any time during the recruiting period this would be alot cleaner and these situations would not come up. You could also make conditional offers and offers that are subject to expiration on the occurrence of some event, which is another way of fixing this problem. For example, "University X offers Y Student Athlete a scholarship, provided Z coach is still in place on National Signing Day and J K L M N O P (better players than Y) have not signed letters of intent with University X."

[Dutch]

personally, i think that the system in place is about as fair as it can really get. Let's be honest. any kid can go anywhere up until signing day. This specific incident is unfortunate, b/c this kid didn't receive good advice from his parent(s). either get the offer in writing, or keep on looking. our 'free market' system will dictate how good a player really is.

what if Vince Young had gone somewhere else b/c UT was looking at 2 QB's his year? Say, he committed to USC and then UT's other QB they were looking at decided at the last minute to go to LSU (perriloux?). should UT be able to sue VY or Perriloux for leaving them high and dry while they went off to win a ring?

I know it's a bad example, but there's not a really fair way to structure this. Signing day needs to be a singular event and at least a month after the season (see:SMU) because of coaching changes.

[EastStang]

The best idea would be to handle it the same way you handle basketball, allow for an early signing period in say July or August. That way, its out of the way. The coaches don't want it because a player can slack off his senior year. There are some voices calling for this and perhaps a few incidents like this one (where the PR damage is bad) will trigger the change.

[sail420s]

This kid says he was offered a scholarship to play for a school that had a coaching change, and the offer was revoked by the new coach. This happens every year. What I find interesting is that he was offered a scholarship as a defensive back. The defensive coordinator of the offering staff is the head coach of the new staff. Did McMackin not like this kid to begin with?

[deleted] happens in life. It sucks, but get used to it. At the end of the day he got bad advice from his folks (who, in their defense, may be at their first rodeo on this one). I think some of the blame (though not legally actionable) should go to the coaching staff of his HS team. They are familiar with the environment and should be advising their kids on their move to the next level.

[Mexmustang]

What about delaying the initial contact period? FI, coaches must wait to make contact with a recruit until May 15th of his junior year. Of course, that may hinder schools like Texas...