Speaking of only what I know a little of, college football recruiting, many of the kids who are trying to play “big time” football, meaning Power 5 conference football, spend a fair amount of time chasing stars from the various rating services, Rivals, ESPN, 247, etc. Some people believe that committing early, not just reporting offers, helps “goose” the star rating a bit, and can make a marginal 3 star a 4 star, etc. The idea being that the more stars, the more visible the recruit is to higher level programs. Also, I have seen reported commitments to one school generate a quick offer from another, perceptively better school that has been recruiting the kid but didn’t feel the need to rush to an offer. This just happened with a kid at my son’s school. A junior committed to a nice Power 5 program and a couple days later a marquee school a bit higher up the food chain put out an offer.
It is a huge shell game sometimes, at least in football and basketball recruiting, and coaches spend almost as much time trying to keep guys who committed in the basket as they do trying to close the deal on other kids. Frankly, the schools brought this on themselves. Generally schools will start with the we are only taking x at your position in this class talk right after kicking out an offer. Then the kids track the commitments on the recruiting sites, and if, for example, West Virginia tells the kid they are taking three LBs and there are two reported commitments, he might commit just to make sure he has a place in case Penn State, who is probably recruiting him heavily but hasn’t offered yet because they may be waiting to see if another kid commits somewhere else, ends up not offering. Yes, there are a relative handful of kids who can take their time and wait right until signing day and then pick between Alabama, Ohio State and Oregon but there are not many of those kids. The majority of kids in the classes even at that level are somewhat fungible. One four star running back coming out of high school is not a ton different than another in many ways, and if Ohio State says they will take two RBs in this class and 247 shows they have offered 4 you can bet those 4 are trying to figure out where the others are going to jump so they don’t end up holding out too long.
So generally speaking, I kind of understand what these kids are doing. Honoring your word is a good thing, and I don’t mean to minimize it. But the only control these kids have in the process is the time before they sign the NLI. I can’t blame the kids for trying to use what few tools they have to their advantage.