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And who cares if the letters bind prospects to colleges, not coaches?
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That's so five years ago.
These days, granting releases to prospects who request them after the coach for whom they wanted to play is fired or otherwise gone has become common practice. For proof, look no further than what happened at LSU on Tuesday, when new coach Trent Johnson released a statement explaining his decision to release top 30 recruit J'Mison Morgan -- a 6-foot-11 center from Dallas who signed with LSU while John Brady was the coach but didn't want to follow through with the commitment once Brady was fired.
"The bottom line with me will always be that I want players here who want to play for LSU," Johnson said in the statement. "There is some closure with this decision, but no player will ever be bigger than the program."
The issue here is not that Morgan didn't want to play for Johnson.
It's that the second Brady was fired, various schools began quietly recruiting Morgan away from LSU, and most believe the Tigers didn't lose their prized prospect Tuesday as much as they lost him in the two-month span during which they did not have a coach.
For two months, other programs were able to reconnect with Morgan's AAU coaches and others in his inner circle. So even though it's considered proper form to not recruit signed prospects until they are granted a release, it should come as no surprise that it has long been speculated that Morgan would enroll at UCLA if Johnson released him.
An official Morgan-to-UCLA announcement is now expected before the end of the week.
"I don't worry about it," Johnson said by phone when asked about the general practice of programs targeting prospects who have signed with schools enduring coaching changes. "But there is a lot of that going on."
How much, you ask?
"I think it goes on a fair amount," said one high-major assistant who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I know I started doing it this year."
At least he's truthful, right?
And the truth of the matter is that it goes on more than the average fan realizes, this year more than most others. Marquette lost Tyshawn Taylor to Kansas and Nick Williams to Indiana when Tom Crean left. Pepperdine lost Brad Tinsley to Vanderbilt when Vance Walberg resigned. Indiana lost Devin Ebanks to a yet-to-be-determined school (probably West Virginia or Memphis) when Kelvin Sampson was fired. And perhaps the best story of them all is how Stanford lost Miles Plumlee to Duke when Johnson left for LSU, this despite Duke associate head coach Johnny Dawkins being named the new coach at Stanford.
On the surface, it looks like Mike Krzyzewski stole his former assistant's top incoming player.
In reality, Duke was working the Plumlee deal long before Dawkins was even in the picture.
"All throughout April coaches were coming up to me while I was on the road asking if I had heard of anybody who was trying to get a release (because of a coaching change)," said Scout.com recruiting analyst Evan Daniels. "Those conversations are extremely common. You know how it is."
Yes, I do.
So my advice to coaches is to not fret this November when the signing period comes and goes.
Didn't get a good point guard early?
Don't sweat it.
Didn't get a good post player early?
Don't sweat it.
Program-changing prospects will be back on the board in time for the late recruiting period, guaranteed. All you have to do is wait for the coaching carousel to start moving, then take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding various programs by plucking their prospects, one by one.