BY TAYLOR BELL, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
When John Foley was being recruited out of St. Rita in 1985, he said badmouthing was the least of the evils that dozens of colleges employed to influence his decision.
Foley, USA Today’s defensive player of the year, was offered $25,000 in cash, a new house for his parents, a job for his father, a car for his girlfriend and full scholarships for his friends. One school even tried to influence his father by taking advantage of his alcoholism.
”They talked more about giving me things than talking about their schools,” Foley recalled. ”Then when they realized I was leaning to Notre Dame, they said Notre Dame was great, but there was no way I could get through there academically. No one gave me a chance.”
Later, after an injury ended his football career, he helped to recruit other athletes for Notre Dame.
”I challenged the badmouthing,” he said. ”I’d call kids and explain that they could make it academically, just as I did, if they applied themselves and took their schoolwork seriously.”
The NCAA investigated Foley’s recruiting, including allegations that some schools offered money, houses and jobs, and two major programs were penalized severely.
”The NCAA said I wouldn’t get to college if I didn’t cooperate with their investigation,” Foley said.
But the NCAA never has penalized anyone for badmouthing.
In college football, badmouthing is as much a part of the recruiting process as campus visits and highlight films. Everybody does it — at least to some extent.
Not surprisingly, it isn’t a popular subject among coaches. In fact, one Big Ten head coach declined to comment for this story.
What is badmouthing? According to the dictionary, it means ”to criticize severely and persistently; to criticize or disparage, spitefully or unfairly.”
But college coaches, recruiting analysts and high school recruits offer other definitions.
”Anything is OK unless it gets real personal,” said Dave Roberts, who coached at six colleges in 35 years. ”We were 0-11 one year. What can you say? I’d go into a home and ask, ‘Who’s beating us up?’ If someone is bashing us, it must mean they don’t have enough good things to say about their school.”
Pat Fitzgerald experienced badmouthing as a recruit coming out of Sandburg High School, and he has to deal with it as the head coach at Northwestern. It is common for rival schools to question a recruit’s ability to make the grade at Northwestern academically.
”It happened to me as a player,” Fitzgerald said. ”One school told me that I didn’t fit into Northwestern academically, that I wouldn’t make it because I was a good student but not Northwestern’s type. ‘Look at your transcript,’ he told me. I scratched that school from my list.
”Today I tell kids, ‘Do you want to play for someone who thinks you’re not good enough to do something?’ That’s what I thought when that coach said I wasn’t good enough academically to go to Northwestern. At first, I thought, ‘Maybe he’s right.’ But my parents said I wasn’t going to that school. Why? Because you won’t play for someone who doesn’t believe you are good enough, they said. I’m glad I had so much support from my parents.”
Fitzgerald doesn’t think that badmouthing is as prevalent as others suggest, that most coaches focus on their schools and don’t talk about other programs, that their sales pitch is subtle but not malicious.
”I think coaches use sales techniques rather than badmouthing,” he said.
Bob Chmiel, who coached for 28 years with stops at Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Michigan and Notre Dame, insists there was more honor in the coaching fraternity in the 1970s and 1980s, even into the 1990s. But he said it has changed considerably in the last decade — for the worse.
”We never used to call a kid who was committed to another school if it was definite,” Chmiel said. ”Now there are major programs that have reputations for recruiting kids who have committed to other schools. In the past, a kid’s decision was honored. We moved on to another guy.
”Not today. Now kids are getting pounded by other schools even though they are committed. There is more pressure on college coaches, more money at stake. College coaches need to start exhibiting the fraternalism of the past. Some of the best recruiters of the past wouldn’t badmouth another school in any way.”
Chmiel praised two of his old bosses. Michigan’s Bo Schembechler once told him: ”If you have to badmouth another school, you don’t know enough about Michigan.” And Chmiel said he never, ever heard a word from Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz that bordered on negativism while he was recruiting a youngster.
Recruiting analyst Tom Lemming, who has observed the recruiting process for nearly 30 years, said a lot of prospects are influenced by badmouthing ”because they don’t know what is going on. Some coaches are very good at it. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done it.”
”They make very subtle comments, very few blatant remarks. It is a backhanded compliment, something negative about another school, maybe a rumor or just innuendo.
”Early on, it is an effective practice. Later, kids become smart and realize what is going on. A smart coach will warn a kid what a school might say about them so a kid is aware of what is going on when it happens.”
For example, a school is loaded with offensive linemen. Another coach might tell a recruit: ”’Oh, they did a great job, but they have stockpiled offensive linemen in the last few years.’ It sounds like a compliment, but it’s a backhanded shot,” Lemming said.
Vinny Cerrato, who was Holtz’s chief recruiter at Notre Dame for nine years, Chmiel and Roberts claim the trick is to try to ”dispel the myths,” to turn negatives in your favor by anticipating what other recruiters are saying about your program.
”Badmouthing was huge when I was at Notre Dame,” said Cerrato, now the personnel director of the Washington Redskins. ”They would say the school has no social life, that you won’t be comfortable unless you are Catholic, Holtz won’t be there much longer, it was too cold for kids from the South, the campus was too small, there weren’t enough minorities, academics are too tough, too many players at your position. They’d rip on Notre Dame the whole time.
”But I didn’t care about other schools. I felt we were the top dog. We didn’t have to rip everybody else. When I knew who was doing the badmouthing, I would prep kids on what they would say when they came in for a visit. If all they are going to do is rip Notre Dame, what does that say about their school?
”I used to go in and sell what we had to offer … academics, job after graduation, graduation rate, chance to play big-time football on a national stage. I sold our opportunities. I didn’t care about other schools.”
Roberts said he long ago learned a lesson about the recruiting process that every coach should heed.
”I was at Vanderbilt, and we were recruiting Chicago,” he said. ”Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you say. We recruited four kids for 18 months, and Notre Dame came in during the last week and signed all four. Sometimes you do everything you can and then move on. Winning takes care of everything.”
