2011 Recruiting Trip: Long Days, Little Good
AKRON, Ohio -- There is a perception among many coaches that Tom Izzo would like to do away with the July evaluation period, and the reason folks think that is essentially the same reason folks think it about all high-major future Hall of Famers. It's because, supposedly, Izzo is an established brand who is getting older and no longer wants to deal with the long days the summer requires.
I can tell you, point blank, that is not true.
We haven't left a gym the past two nights until the final game was over.
We haven't skipped a session.
More on Recruiting
Road trip with Parrish and Goodman
Key July AAU tournaments and dates
Top 100 player rankings: 2012 | 2013
Profiles: Isaiah Austin | Andre Drummond | Shabazz Muhammad | DaJuan Coleman
Latest recruiting news | Recruiting blog
We've been among the first five people in the gym everyday.
"I don't want to get rid of summer," Izzo said. "I just want to get rid of the bullsh-t."
Whether this is possible is unclear.
Even Izzo acknowledges that.
The shoe companies, the agents and the people who work for the agents basically run everything this month, and the machine is probably too big and powerful to stop. But, honestly, that's not even what bothers Izzo most because he just sort of accepts it as part of the deal. What bothers him -- and why he doesn't like this time of the year as much as he used to -- is how everybody is capitalizing on the big business of recruiting.
There are more events with more teams now than ever. So every event is watered down, and the only places to regularly see a lot of good players playing against each other at the same location is here at the LeBron James Skills Academy this week, next week at the Nike Peach Jam in North Augusta, S.C., and the following week at the Fab 48 in Las Vegas.
Outside of those events, there are lots of time spent in cars traveling from one game to the next. Too often, it's impossible to see all the kids a coach wants to see. Too often, the matchups are total mismatches because the elite players are spread throughout the country because a man after a quick dollar will organize an event, pay one good team with good prospects to come, make every other team pay to come, make college coaches recruiting the good prospects from the one good team pay to come and, just like that, we've got a bad event that's mostly pointless for everybody except the man making the money off the event.
"I don't mind being in a gym 15 hours everyday," Izzo said. "I just want to be able to get something done."
