by sdiamond » Mon Sep 25, 2017 12:17 pm
This is what I found regarding verbals:
The oral or verbal agreement is not binding in anyway. When a coach offers an athlete a scholarship or a spot on the roster, depending on the situation or sport, it means that if the athlete commits that spot is taken (in word only). If the athlete doesn’t commit, the offer is there until someone else commits to fill that spot. Remember, each sport has only a limited number of spots available in a year.
A verbal offer is made by the sport’s coaching staff and not by the school or athletic department. Usually, there is an agreement between the athletic director and the coaching staff that they are only offering student athletes that meet the department’s, school’s and NCAA’s requirements.
Because the offer is not binding, either the athlete or the university can back out of the commitment at any time. Many athletes do.
When I was at UCLA we’d lose one or two committed players a year at most but we could usually see it coming.
The offer and subsequent commitment is much more sacred to the school’s coaching staff for a couple reasons:
1) The PR of withdrawing a spot from a committed player is tough to overcome especially with the athlete’s high school. It may take a college coach a long time to heal that wound.
2) Other college coaches will use it against you forever or as long as it is effective, saying that a player can’t trust your word which is huge in recruiting. With the internet involvement, the word will spread far and wide.
We had a steadfast policy at UCLA that when we offered a scholarship, nothing short of legal problems, a major violation of high school rules or academic failures would we rescind a committed player’s scholarship. Even if the athlete was injured playing his sport, we would honor the commitment.
The “verbal agreement” is only as good as the word of the people involved!!