Here is a question regarding who is moral in this recruitment process.
Can a player make a verbal commitment to a school before they are academically qualified to attend (or admitted)?
Of course. No verbal commitment requires the school to admit the kid to allow them to fulfill the verbal commitment. About all a verbal commitment means is that the kid is engaged to the school and is suppose to have eyes only for the one school. If the kid is smart, they will keep their eyes open and pursue the best school possible. The NCAA is a monopoly and tries to monopolize everything else around it -- including high school age children.

Nathan Hampton
________________________________________
From: - Hockey-L - The College Hockey Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Joe Makowiec [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 8:53 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the dog days of summer...

At 7-25-2012 08:56 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:
<snip stuff about player's history>

>This brings up a host of issues, both moral and legal.  I am not
>personally familiar with the "commitment" process nor the NC$$ rules
>of recruitment. Since Brown is a member of the Ivy League, the
>school is not permitted to award athletic scholarships. However,
>there was apparently a $400,000 "financial aid package" involving
>Kevin and Derick Roy (who also de-commited at the same time) which
>is likely the way that most colleges and universities handle their
>non-scholarship issues (that's my own impression, not verifiable fact).
>
>So I thought I would throw the issue out into the ether for
>discussion.  What kind of moral commitment did Roy make (and
>break)?  Apparently, there was no legal commitment.  But if there
>was a legal commitment, what would the proper response be from the
>school?  The other issue is what, if any, is the policy within the
>NC$$ regarding recruitment by coaches and staff regarding a player
>who has verbally commited elsewhere.  Or, is verbal commitment just a joke?

As to the commitment issue: It's worse in other sports
[whisper]roundball[/whisper], where they're getting 'verbal
commitments' out of junior high level kids, if for nothing else than
to lock them up so that other schools don't recruit them.  (What was
the line?  Something like - Woody Hayes was Notre Dame's best
recruiter.  When he had a good kid he was interested in, but who
wasn't interested in [The] Ohio State, he would send them down the
road to Notre Dame so that they wouldn't go to Michigan.)  I think
that some athletic wear companies may be signing kids that age, too.

Are those commitments binding?  (It would appear not.)
Are they good public policy?  (Who's running the NCAA?)
Are they good for the kid?  How many kids know what they want out of
their college education when they're 15?

As to the scholarship issue:  Some few years back, when Union
committed to staying Division 1 in hockey, but without (athletic)
scholarships, they found a pool of scholarship money dedicated to
'campus diversity'.  Evidently they were short on Canadian
applicants...  (Can someone from the Union community correct me if my
recall is off?)  (FWIW, Union is one of those grandfathered D-3
schools which have up to two D-1 teams.  So they would also need an
exemption to give scholarships, similar to RPI.)

Actually, being non-scholarship may be better for a school.  Athletic
aid is fairly constrained, whereas general scholarship money tends to
have fewer restrictions on it.

>I know that this isn't about hockey, but, hey, it's late July and
>it's all I've got.

Nah, it's relevant, plus as you say, it's quiet in here.

Joe
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