I totally get just wanting to talk about the players here at UTEP. However, talking about the recruiting process of a past or present recruits is actually a good thing. Major college recruiting is a dirty business, slimy in some instances. The term "student athlete" has taken on a different meaning versus when grandpa played.
Chi is interested in knowing why do some miner fans rag on a former recruit who decided not to attend UTEP and the UTEP loyalist are dismayed why a good recruit would turn down a coach like Billy boy or Floyd? There's a reason, pure sadistic behavior. Nothing more, nothing less.
You see Chi, my boy, recruits like a Hamilton or Galindo are street smart. I'm talking "A Clockwork Orange" (1971 Sci Fi film) type of street smarts. Hamilton was live on ESPN dressed in UCLA blue and gold and then at the last second, said he is signing with UTEP and a with a shit eating grin on his face saying someone else picked out his wardrobe for the live broadcast and he didn't realize it was UCLA colors. Yeah....sure! He's not the first high profile recruit to do so on live TV, nor will he be the last. It happens every recruiting season in major college athletics. That is just mean and kind of cruel in a Puritan sense of the word.
However, the (hard) core fans need to realize that when a prized recruit puts UTEP on the short list, or perhaps actually signs, the player is still not obligated and actually holds all the cards; even after signing. The college is screwed after so much time and effort and must restart the process and show cause if there was tampering. UTEP couldn't prove tampering in the Hamilton case, so Floyd had to eat it, and eat it he did, but then again, these are kids with grown men bodies and they should have rights and protection from predatory recruiting practices. Now with Galindo, he flew down to El Paso and UTEP fans gave him the red carpet treatment, but literally at the last minute, Kansas lost a top recruit, called Galindo and the rest is history.
Then there's the "pipeline" college industry recruiting world. This is the one that you swear sometimes was the creation of Beelzebub himself due to the fact that some players go to these institutions that have bare bones living condition, sketchy academic credentials which sometime don't pass the sniff test, but yet charge a young recruit his shooting arm. El Paso had this problem a couple of years back but with a local self proclaimed football "coach". He took the money and ran leaving out of town hopefuls high and dry.
