High school coaches say juco change killing Kansas football players’ chances

The recruiting process hasn’t gone the way Derby senior Lachlan Jones envisioned it.

A starting wide receiver on Derby’s last two Class 6A championship football teams, Jones figured that alone would be enough to attract suitors. They would remark on his size (6-foot-2, 190 pounds) and his tenacious blocking and his reliable hands.

“A year ago, he would have been a kid that every junior college would be after,” Derby coach Brandon Clark said. “I don’t have any doubt that Lachlan would have an offer from every junior college in the state.”

But in October, the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference unanimously voted to eliminate restrictions on how many athletic scholarships can be given to out-of-state athletes, which has sent the state’s community colleges looking primarily outside of Kansas this recruiting season — at least for now.

It’s left plenty of local high school coaches and athletes miffed.

Players such as Jones are being passed over, high school coaches say. Jones says he has received two junior-college offers, but the most of his recruiting attention has come from the NAIA level, where tuition is pricier than a community college and doesn’t offer a springboard to major-college football.

“I have some schools looking at me, but it’s not as high as I thought it would be,” Jones said. “I’m just like everybody else: My ultimate goal is to play in Division I. I’m still looking at maybe going to the juco route because I want to prove that I can play at the next level.”

‘It’s killing us’

In theory, there are more opportunities in the Jayhawk Conference for Kansans than before.

Last fall’s rule changes included upping the roster limit from 63 players to 85, creating 176 new spots in the eight-team league. The conference will also vote in April on creating full-ride scholarships beginning in the 2018-19 season. Currently, schools can offer only books and tuition.

Restrictions had been in place since the mid-1960s, when several teams filled their rosters with mostly out-of-state players, violating a gentlemen’s agreement to limit those players.

Garden City Community College coach Jeff Sims, who campaigned for the rule change, said the rule was based on discrimination.

“I have a real problem with anybody who gives me trouble about changing a rule that was put in 55 years to discriminate,” Sims said. “And guess what? It did a great job.”

Sims says a common misconception is that out-of-state players are taking spots and money from Kansas athletes. While Jayhawk teams can now offer unlimited out-of-state scholarships, they cannot be paid for by Kansas taxpayer money and must be raised separately — by a booster club, for example.

“All I keep hearing is that we’re hurting Kansas kids and I just don’t understand how you’re hurting somebody when you created 176 new roster spots and turned books-and-tuition scholarships into full rides,” Sims said. “There is absolutely no negative to the rule change.”

But local high school coaches claim all of those new scholarships haven’t translated to more opportunities for their players. They claim the opposite.

“These jucos have fallen in love with out-of-staters,” West coach Weston Schartz said. “They used to come through and they were our best friends, but now that they don’t need anything, they don’t give us the time of day. It’s killing us.”

“I haven’t got a single call,” Valley Center coach Caleb Smith echoed. “They’re just completely silent and not around anymore, where in the past they were dropping in weekly. Before the rule change, usually any of my starting guys were good enough to play at the next level. Now my best guys, my (all-class) guys aren’t even getting a look.”

Smith said he was told by a junior college coach that their recruiting process had become more “selective” and their in-state recruiting board had been downsized to less than 10 percent of what it was last year. A Rivals.com recruiting analyst, Randy Withers, has heard something similiar.

Even without the eight community colleges, Kansas has 19 four-year colleges — Kansas and Kansas State, four in NCAA Division II and 13 in the NAIA — that offer scholarships, although only KU and K-State offer full scholarships.

“Some of these kids can still get a scholarship at one of those other schools, but they’re going to have to pay quite a bit more money,” Derby’s Clark said. “That’s the biggest difference. Some of these kids can’t afford to do that. The junior-college route was a huge opportunity for kids to get two or three years of their education paid for and now those opportunities aren’t there.”

Several area coaches say they are expecting well under half of the number of seniors sign on national signing day Wednesday.

This is what Northwest coach Steve Martin, one of the most outspoken opponents of the rule change, feared as president of the state’s high school football coaches association.

“The proof is now in the pudding,” Martin said. “I guess people thought I was blowing smoke or blowing things out of proportion, but now here we are.”

‘The recruiting process has reversed’

Bryce Roderick, president of the Jayhawk Conference, understands Kansas high school football coaches’ worries.

But he feels like it’s too soon to panic.

“It used to be where coaches knew those in-state kids were going to be the competition in recruiting, so that’s why Kansas kids were always recruited first in the past,” Roderick said. “Now with that pressure off, I think what is happening is that the recruiting process has reversed. Now coaches are recruiting the out-of-state kids first and then I think they will turn and look at Kansas kids to fill out those other spots.”

Sims said filling out more than two-thirds of a roster with Kansas players isn’t feasible for every member of the Jayhawk Conference. He said research illustrates his point.

He examined the rosters of all eight schools during from 2008-15 and found 30 instances where a school failed to fill its roster spots reserved for Kansas players. That means nearly half of the conference every season was struggling to fill out a roster.

Sims discovered it wasn’t a conference-wide issue. Butler and Hutchinson combined to fill their Kansas allotments 13 of 16 times, while the other six schools filled theirs 44 percent of the time in the eight-year span.

Sims says the impact on Kansas high school players is overblown when many of those Kansas spots were going unfilled.

“Everyone keeps saying that we want to protect our Kansas kids, but the rule only benefited Butler and Hutch,” said Sims, whose team won the NJCAA championship in December. “Before I got in this league, only one team won this league and that’s because all of the rules were based for Butler. That’s why all the dudes in Wichita are sour, because they’re all Butler cronies.”

It raises the question of what the mission of Kansas community colleges — and their athletic programs — should be: to educate those in their communities or to put out the best product in an attempt to win games?

“I’m as big of a fan of Kansas high school football as anybody out there,” said Jeremy Crabtree, a national recruiting analyst for ESPN based in Overland Park. “But if your job requires you to win games and you can go to Texas or Florida and get a more talented kid, then I can understand it. You can’t blame the coaches for doing that.”

“The purpose of our jucos should be to serve and educate our Kansas kids,” countered Valley Center’s Smith. “If the jucos are going this route, where it’s more about winning football games than the education side of things, then there’s something wrong with the system.”

‘Those opportunities are no longer there’

Both levels of coaches agree the “project” is being affected most.

“You hear stories about those kinds of kids all the time,” said Withers, the Rivals.com reporter who covers Kansas community college recruiting. “A guy doesn’t have the grades or didn’t get the looks, so he goes to a junior college, develops, and ends up on scholarship at a four-year university. They turn themselves around, committed themselves to the classroom, and had a career impacting communities in legitimate, positive ways.

“Those opportunities are no longer there for kids in the Sunflower state. When you start thinking about it on that level and the impact it could have, that’s when it starts to get scary.”

Hutchinson Community College coach Rion Rhoades is an example of one of those stories.

Rhoades was overlooked in high school in Liberal and decided to go to Hutchinson, where he proved himself and received a scholarship to Western Illinois. Rhoades earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in sports administration.

“I’m proud to be a product of the Kansas junior college system,” Rhoades said. “It opened doors for me that weren’t there before, so it’s disappointing now to see the direction the conference has chosen to go in. It’s unfortunate the conference adjusted to a few new guys, who are not native Kansans, that made a bunch of noise about a system that I’m still not convinced was broke.”

Butler coach Tim Schaffner has also pledged to continue recruiting Kansas kids, but he admits the number of in-state recruits is on the decline.

“Where it affects us is our ability to take that project or ’tweener guy,” Schaffner said. “Some of those kids are going to fall through the cracks and I think what you’re going to see is it’s going to end up being a windfall for MIAA schools like Pitt State and Emporia State and Northwest Missouri.”

Sims agrees and says those types of players, on his team and many around the conference, were forced to play earlier than preferred due to depth issues. Because he was restricted to 20 out-of-state athletes, Sims felt in some cases he had to take Kansas athletes, regardless of their skill, to be “dorm-fillers.”

“All these coaches are saying, ‘Johnny is getting hurt (by the new rules),’ ” Sims said. “Well, you want Johnny to come to my school? We have some freaks around here. So when I get Johnny the dorm-filler and he gets hit by a freak, well, then that’s not going to be a real good experience for him. Then Johnny is really getting hurt.”

Sims says the rule change allows for a more “true” recruiting process, where Kansas athletes are being recruited for their skills and not just because they’re from Kansas. He acknowledged that the “projects” are no longer being offered scholarships, but the opportunity to play at community college exists — they will just have to be willing to walk on and “earn” their scholarship now.

“Bottom line, competitors don’t need handouts,” Sims said. “Last time I checked we lived in America, where you’re supposed to earn your spot and you weren’t supposed to be given nothing.”

‘We will have the best teams in the country’

So what does the rule change mean for the future of the Jayhawk Conference?

“I don’t think anyone knows what it all means yet,” Butler’s Schaffner said. “There’s so many dynamics in play that I’m not sure everybody thought everything through. I think it’s going to take three or four years to see what the effects are and see what the unintended consequences will be.”

Roderick can envision the conference revisiting the rule.

“Just like anything that is new, sometimes you go too far to the extreme early on,” Roderick said. “Once everybody gets into it and understands the parameters, I think you’ll see us come back to a more centered position. I really think that’s where we’re going to end up.”

Not in the opinion of Sims, who thinks everyone will come to see his side in five years.

“I believe we will have the most-recruited league, the most-watched league in all of junior-college football,” Sims said. “Every Division I program in the country will come through the Jayhawk Conference looking to give out scholarships because we will have the best teams in the country.”

Detractors say if the conference shifts to primarily out-of-state athletes, then attendance will suffer.

“Nothing against those kids from Georgia and California and Texas, but it sure is fun to watch those Kansas kids,” Mulvane coach Dave Fennewald said.

“What these junior colleges are going to find out when they bring in 50 or 60 out-of-state kids is that a kid from Texas or California doesn’t want to come to Independence and be a third-string linebacker,” West’s Schartz said. “They’ll see when half those kids take the midnight train back home to Georgia when the going gets tough.”

Wednesday’s signing day will only tell part of the story. Community colleges fill most of their rosters during the summer months.

But Sims says Kansas should be proud of abolishing a rule adopted during the 1960s that he called the “welfare” of football.

“I love Kansas high school football players, I really do,” Sims said. “But you know what? I love Oklahoma football players. And I love Nebraska football players. I love anybody who wants to come and compete for me. So I have a real problem with anybody who gives me trouble about changing a rule that was put in place 55 years ago to discriminate.

“We should be applauding the rule change because we’re not 1962 anymore.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2017 at 3:08 PM with the headline "High school coaches say juco change killing Kansas football players’ chances."