Malik Newman committed/agreed to play for Mississippi State without signing an LOI last week. If Ben Howland had insisted on the LOI, Newman would have gone to Kentucky, or Kansas, or ...
At first it will be the top 100 or so players who will refuse to sign, and the schools will be so happy to get them they won't make a deal of it.
How would you like to be a Connecticut or Florida LOI signee as Kevin Ollie and Billy Donovan flirt with the Oklahoma City job? An LOI means the player has to go to the school, even if the coach that recruited him isn't there. Brad Stevens hosed his Butler recruits when he took the Celtics job on July 3rd, 2013.
Expecting a kid to pick a school, and not a coach, is gobbly gook. What if Donovan leaves, and Florida's A.D. picks a Tony Bennett style coach, who wins games, but does it scoring in the 50's and 60's? Because 4 high school seniors signed a piece of paper in November, they have to show up in Gainesville, but the coach who recruited them gets to bail in May, and they have to play a style of play they aren't suited for, at least for a year, and then they have to sit out a year when they transfer? That's a hardship that athletes and parents aren't going to stand for, there will be lawsuits, and the power conferences will capitulate.
Either the language in the LOI has to change, or the whole concept is going to be history. I predict Donovan's eventual departure is going to shine a light on the problem, and begin a national discussion that will groundswell over time into some type of reform.
LOI's have never favored the player, and have always provided more protection for the school. They were created by a Texas Tech professor in the late 60's because the Southwest Conference football schools were offering scholarships to everybody before there were any real scholarship limits. Texas' Darrell Royal was hoarding athletes so they couldn't play against him for SMU (Hayden Fry), Baylor, Texas Tech and the rest. It brought some sanity to the situation, but the NLI solved a problem for the conference and the schools, more than it did anything for the athlete.
The more money everybody makes (Networks/Conferences/Schools/Shoe & Athletic Wear Companies, ...) the more hypocritical and outdated the paradigm of amateurism and the student/athlete from the '50's/60's/70's becomes. There is a revolution a brewing. The athlete will always get the short end of the stick, but since the stick has migrated from a tooth pick to a two by four, that short end will progressively contain increased advantages that would make athletes from previous eras quite envious.
See former Duke player and future D1 college basketball coach Nolan Smith's ideas for reform. This is the future, it's not far away, and it's for the better.
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/col...-could-be-better-for-its-players-bd5c8c59fcdc