A Quick Clarification On The Bobby Evans & Rodney Anderson “Signing”

After OU director of player personnel Drew Hill announced the “signing” of 2015 commits Bobby Evans and Rodney Anderson last night on Twitter, I’ve seen some confusion (like this tweet or this story, or at least the contradictory and confusing headline on said story) on what that actually means. And there have already been some here who have also asked about it, so I figured I’d would quickly explain.

The agreements Evans and Anderson have now signed with OU were simply financial aid agreements. It is NOT a document that binds them to OU. So if you see it described that way elsewhere, that person does not know what they’re talking about. A recruit could actually sign a financial aid agreement with multiple schools if they were so inclined. Which is why it’s an important distinction to make between a financial aid agreement and a national letter of intent.*

*Which is correctly abbreviated as NLI. Not LOI, which is another good indicator of someone not familiar with what they’re writing and/or talking about. Sorry, but for whatever stupid reasons that has become a major pet peeve of mine. Moving on.

The NLI is binding and does tie a recruit to a school, though once signed the school does have the option to release a prospect from their NLI and I suspect most of you are familiar with the drama that, at times, can go along with that whole process.

So you might be asking yourself why OU was allowed to send out the tweet referenced above last night when in the past you’ve heard speaking publicly about a recruit is considered a minor NCAA violation. The tweet and OU’s publicly mentioned of Evans and Anderson is permissible as a result of a relatively new rule allowing prospects expecting to enroll early to sign financial aid agreements much earlier than they’ve been allowed to do in the past. And once the paperwork is signed, the school can publicly acknowledge (which just sounds silly to say/type) the recruits without fear of breaking any rules. However, there is a little bit of a rub with that last point.

Because a prospect could sign a financial aid agreement with multiple schools, it opens up the door for something like the following: Say a kid signs multiple agreements with School X, Y & Z. And let’s say all three schools announce or at least publicly mention the signing. Now the kid winds up picking School Y instead of X or Z, which in theory would mean those two schools have now technically committed an NCAA violation for publicly speaking about a prospect who didn’t actually sign with them.

It’s a slippery slope and one the NCAA really hasn’t had to deal with yet, so we don’t actually know what, if anything, would happen. But I don’t want to make this any more confusing than it has to be or as some others, in my opinion, have made it.

The short version of the story is Evans and Anderson have “signed” with OU, allowing the school/coaches to speak of them publicly, but they are not actually bound to OU until they sign their national letter of intent (NLI). If I wasn’t clear (always a good chance) or have only further confused you, just comment below and I’ll do my best to try and clarify. Hopefully at least one of you found this to be helpful.