Maybe someone can educate me about this. I am mostly referring to spring game weekend in this post. How much interaction do the recruits get with the coaching staff? Should the staff have been more involved that night or is that forbidden? And regarding AA, I know it has been mentioned on here but he made every choice on his own. But where are his parents during all of this? Do recruits commonly come on unofficial visits without parents?
If they are so concerned about their son why do they let him drive to these visits on his own unsupervised? Why are they not more involved with his twitter and the strangers he is communicating with on there? Any adult could look at what that guy was doing and say 'that doesn't look right.' Yes he is a highly recruited football player, but he is still a naive 16-17 year old. IMO maybe the family is firing shots at OSU to avoid any attention at them. Maybe this last part is a non-issue, but I'm still curious about the questions above.
Good question. I was wondering the same thing myself. Are there differences between Official and Unofficial visits? Do the recruits receive the same amount of interaction with coaches and school personnel? I wanted to know if there are any differences for the recruits to understand how fans can get this close to the recruits.
I hope someone can let us know the differences of Official and Unofficial visits.
Take a look at this. It doesn't go into a lot of detail on the difference, but it gives some info.
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/eligibility/becoming+eligible/recruiting
Check out pages 20-21 of this pdf from the NCAA. It provides some more detail:
http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/CB11.pdf
Great point made here. I think if this is my kid I am on the visit with him and would probably be tagging along when my 16-17 year old son is out on the town. On the other hand maybe the parents should be able to trust that there son is in safe hands while on an official visit. I think this is way over-blown and how in the world is a recruit or OSU staff supposed to know that a convicted perve might get a picture with some recruits. Personally this would not make me change my committment because I would realize that this was not the University's fault and clearly Waugh is not close to the program.
Shoot...I would tag along to see the campus and stadiums....a kid like anzalone would get to see the best of the best in the nation....I would think as a parent it would be cool to go along as well.
@Tennbuckeye19 Thanks for the links. This is good info to have. I guess the other thing that I really wanted to know, is how much guidance and free time is given to the recruit? I would believe that the recruits are guided by some members of the staff, team, or faculty. This is only hindsight now, but I believe HS kids needs more chaperones than college kids. On the surface, there seems to be no problem with the recruits getting their pictures taken, but ,to play it safe, this needs to be banned from occurring while the recruits are out in public. Pics with coaches and other players is the only way to play it safe.
I believe AA's dad and the whole family was embarrassed to have a photo of their son taken with the pedo and published on the internet. Alex and OSU did nothing wrong, so he may still want to be a Buckeye.
Thank you for your comments Adamant73. I agree.
It sounds like Anzalone's dad wishes to separate themselves from the entire situation and I can't really blame them. Word has it that he took a visit to Florida this week, so perhaps this wasn't the only reason for the decommit, his dad says he was already regretting commiting so early, but perhaps the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
Well...what happened here (while it sucks big time) can happen at florida...did dad go on the florida visit? We all know he didn't come here.