Why you always lying? McDonald's players brush off fibs on recruiting trail
For college coaching staffs, making recruiting pitches to elite prospects can sometimes include white lies or bending of the truth in an effort to land a commitment. But in the era of social media and in a time where elite prospects often know each other for years, sometimes the wrong statement can end up costing a coach in the long run. At this week’s McDonald’s All-American Game we caught up with several five-star prospects to get some examples of a few of the fibs they heard during the recruiting process.
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“Definitely. Coaches will tell you unrealistic things or things they think you want to hear. Being a big man I know I’m not going to touch the ball that much, that’s just a part of the game and something players have to get used to and I accept it. But a coach told me I will make sure you run the team and every possession down we will pass you the ball and you get to decide if you want to take the shot or not. Which is completely unrealistic.”
“They said playing time. Like nobody was going to play 30 or more minutes a game. They were going to spread it out with all of us like 20-22 minutes a game. And then I talked to some other people and Cole Swider told me that they told him that he would be playing more than 30 minutes a game. I said, ‘What?!' Then I just crossed them off my list. That was it. That’s the good thing about Syracuse. They weren’t feeding me anything crazy. They kept it real with me.”
“Probably that you can come in and it would be my team right away. Telling me that everything was going to be going through me and I was going to be getting playing time and there’s no plays and stuff like that and then I would watch that school and they would run 20 plays on one possession so I knew that was wrong. That turned me off for sure.”
“I remember a coach saying that their conference was the best conference. I took a visit and they were bragging about their conference being the best night-in and night-out and trying to pull up facts. But I just knew that it wasn’t the best and this year it came up that way with how their teams did either in the tournament or in the conference. The teams weren’t as good as they were hyping them up to be.”
“Coaches they say things that they don’t really mean all the time. They be saying things like ‘you’re going to start’ but I’m not at the school yet so I don’t know if that’s a lie yet. But nine times out of 10 if the coach says you’re going to start, you might, but it’s not guaranteed. When the coach says you’re guaranteed to start that’s automatically a lie because you’re not guaranteed anything in college. It’s just something they want to say to get you there but my mindset doesn’t let that affect me because I know I have to work for it regardless.”
“Coaches really tell you the good parts about their school. They don’t really lie to you but they try to hide the bad parts and showcase the good parts. It’s not really a lie they just try to hide those things.”
“That’s the coach’s job to get you to go there. I had coaches telling me I would probably never come off the court and you know that’s not true.”
“I won’t get specific but that happens a lot. A coach will just tell you something to get you to commit. Just to have you so no one else can. But it’s a business at the end of the day and I respect it. I wouldn’t know what is a lie until I get there anyway.”
“I don’t know if it wasn’t true but I had a coach tell me I could come in and just score.”
“No, that’s one thing about Duke. They never say anything like that. They were upfront right from the start.”