CHN: The practice of “de-committing”

Mike McMahon of College Hockey News wrote an article about The Gentleman's Agreement: What Now?... For the most part this is old news from this past summer. Only with a different twist to it. There was something from the article that caught my eye. I found the part about the de-commitment to be very compelling and though provoking. Jeff Jackson is right, that word isn't in the dictionary, but it's become a common word in college hockey.

Mike McMahon, College Hockey News -- As Jackson points out, the word de-commit was practically invented by college hockey. It doesn’t actually exist.

“To me, a commitment is a commitment,” Jackson said. “The word de-commit doesn’t exist in Webster’s Dictionary, it’s breaking a commitment. To me, I won’t do it. I won’t go out and recruit a kid who has committed to another school, I don’t care if it’s a big school or a school at the bottom of the standings.”

Players are committing younger and younger – BU verbally committed a 14-year-old earlier this week and Maine committed a 13-year-old player last January – and recruiting to the NLI would render those “commitments” meaningless.

Of course, some would argue that’s already the case.

“Everyone is involved in it,” Jackson said. “The advisors are involved in it, the parents are involved in it, other players are talking in the locker rooms. I don’t like recruiting 15 year olds. I don’t think we should be in that business. I think we should have an agreement where we won’t commit a kid until he’s 17, but we can’t do that because we’re competing with the Canadian Hockey League.”

By signing with a CHL team, a player gives up his NCAA eligibility. In the eyes of the NCAA, because CHL players can be signed by NHL teams and assigned to CHL teams on loan, it’s considered a professional league.

The number of players de-committing, Jackson says, has increased over the years. Part of it, however, is simply the increased public and media attention being placed upon where players are committing. There is nothing stopping a player from proclaiming on Twitter that he has committed to such-and-such school, well before a school is ready to say the same.