A recruiting fumble by Todd Dodge By Troy Shockley February 8, 2007 (This article was in the Abilene Reporter-News on Thursday, February 8th. I also spoke with a source close to the situation. According to the source, Todd Dodge is not welcome to recruit in the Abilene area anymore after this blunder.) National Signing Day 2006 saw nearly two dozen Big Country football players sign national letters of intent. Eleven of those students decided to continue their athletic careers at Division I institutions. This year the Big Country produced just three D-I signees. Taylor Insall should've been the fourth. Insall, a center, came into his senior season at Cooper High School with limited interest from Division I schools; not really surprising, considering he's a center. Even without a records search it's safe to say this is one of the very few stories in which Insall will have seen his name in the Abilene Reporter-News during his varsity career. It's the nature of the position. Nonetheless, both the University of Texas-El Paso and the University of North Texas were after Insall, and he decided to go with the Mean Green. Insall gave UNT coach Darrell Dickey a solid verbal commitment before the season even began and held firmly to his choice, turning down an offer from UTEP. An important note: Insall's was the only commitment North Texas received nationwide. On Nov. 8, North Texas director of athletics Rick Villarreal announced that Dickey would not return in 2007. About a month later, Southlake Carroll's Todd Dodge was hired as his replacement - and that's where things took an ugly turn. Insall and Cooper coach Mike Spradlin repeatedly attempted to contact Dodge to confirm the university's scholarship offer was still in place. Spradlin, after all, came to Abilene after a stint at the University of Houston, also a Division I school, and had been heavily involved with the recruiting process there. He knows how the game works. When he and head coach Art Briles got to Houston, there were two commitments made by the previous coaching staff. Those commitments were honored. Spradlin said another friend coaching at a Division I school in Texas honored the 13 commitments made before his arrival. It's done across the country. It's done because it is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, not everyone plays the game by those same rules. Spradlin did finally get in touch with Dodge, only to learn that the new North Texas coach had no interest in honoring the scholarship offer made to and accepted by Insall. No, he didn't want to talk with him. No, he didn't want to come see him. No, he didn't care that Insall's was the only commitment he had on his desk. No. Coach, that's not right. It was clear when you announced the hiring of nine assistants to your staff not one month ago that you wanted a fresh start in Denton. You didn't go after Insall or offer him a scholarship. That's fine. I get it. But here's the thing: your predecessor did. And this young man was counting on that agreement as the basis for the next four years of his life. Considering the fact that your hiring came so late in the recruiting process, the right thing to do would have been to honor all existing offers to players who remained committed to your program. Give them a year to prove themselves. In this case, your job should have been easy - you only had one commitment. When commitments aren't honored by new coaches, any other Division I schools that extended offers to these young men, like UTEP did with Insall, have moved on. They've filled that spot. So when an offer is taken away, a kid with D-I talent is left with nothing other than the hope that a Division II school still has some money left to throw his way. Coach, if you wanted to reevaluate Insall, that's understandable. That's your job. But you should have at least shown the decency to contact this young man and let him know that's what was going to happen. And if you didn't want to bring in a player you had no part in recruiting, at least tell him as much. You've proven you know how to win. In fact, over the past five years that's all you've done. But - and I recognize this may not actually be in your contract - the job isn't all about winning. It's also about teaching young men about things like honor and integrity. And now, sadly, you've proven something else. When it came to the Taylor Insall matter, you demonstrated neither.
