Opinion | Indiana Preps
Every time a high school athlete posts an offer on social media, someone in the comments has something to say about it. “Wait until you sign.” “Stop bragging.” “It’s just a verbal.” The criticism comes quickly, and it almost always comes from people who don’t fully understand how college recruiting actually works. They mean well. They’re also wrong.
Let’s clear something up first, because the confusion around offers is real and it matters.
When a college coach calls a prospect and says the words “we’re offering you a scholarship,” that is a verbal offer. It is not a contract. It is not a guarantee. It is not binding on either side. Verbal offers and commitments in college athletics are non-binding agreements between coaches and student-athletes that can be withdrawn by either party at any time. The only document that creates any actual obligation is the Athletic Aid Agreement — what most people still call the Letter of Intent — and nothing is official until ink hits that paper.
But here’s where it gets more complicated. Not all verbal offers are created equal.
There are two kinds floating around recruiting circles: committable and non-committable. A committable offer means a recruit can commit to the institution at any moment. A non-committable offer means the school is expressing interest but isn’t ready to accept a commitment yet. The difference is enormous, and most families never think to ask which one they’re holding. For prospects, the only way to know for sure whether their offer is committable is to ask directly: “Can I commit right now?” Common answers that signal it isn’t: “We’d love for you to come to camp first” or “We really want to develop the relationship more.” Translation — they like you, but they’re not locked in.
Non-committable offers are handed out constantly, especially to younger prospects. Colleges give these out as a back-up plan, essentially saying: “We think you might be good, so we’re offering you to be one of the first schools in — but if things change, we’re not bound to this.” More than 101,000 scholarship offers were issued across major college football conferences over eight recruiting cycles to fill roughly 12,000 available scholarships. The math alone tells you most offers are exploratory, not executable.
There are also set windows when official recruiting communication — and formal offers — can begin. For most sports, June 15 after a student-athlete’s sophomore year is when coaches can extend verbal offers and begin direct private communication, including texts, calls, and DMs. NCAA schools cannot make an official offer to a football prospect until June 15 after his sophomore year or September 1 of his junior year. Before those dates, a prospect can receive camp brochures and general materials, but no recruiting conversations. Anything before those windows — and yes, some programs find creative ways around the spirit of those rules — operates in a gray area.
Even after a legitimate committable offer is extended and accepted verbally, the process isn’t over. Coaches leave programs. Rosters change. New staffs come in and decide the previous commitments aren’t their commitments. Coaches have rescinded offers to committed prospects, and in some cases, schools have strongly suggested that certain commits seek other options. And on the athlete’s side, committed prospects decommit and reopen their recruitment regularly. The deal isn’t done until it’s signed, and even then, athletes have sought release from their agreements — but that’s a conversation for another day.
So with all of this uncertainty baked into the process, why would anyone argue that an athlete should stay quiet?
Here’s the argument against posting offers, stated as fairly as possible: some people believe that celebrating a non-committable offer is misleading. That it inflates a recruit’s perceived stock. That it sets up the athlete — and the family — for embarrassment if the offer disappears. There’s a version of that concern that’s legitimate. An athlete who posts a non-committable offer from a Power Four program and shuts down their recruitment is making a mistake. The education matters.
But posting the offer itself? That’s not the mistake. Silence is.
In the current recruiting landscape, a posted offer is not bragging. It is marketing. It is leverage. It is, for many recruits, the actual mechanism by which more offers are generated. Non-committable offers are real enough to tweet, real enough to excite a family, real enough to attract interest from other schools — and that last part is the point everyone dismissing social media posts keeps missing. When School A sees that School B has offered a prospect they haven’t evaluated yet, the pressure to get involved intensifies. Programs don’t want to fall behind on players who might become stars. An offer creates visibility. Visibility creates more offers. More offers create a market. And a market creates leverage.
This is not a new phenomenon in sports. It’s called competition, and it runs the entire industry.
For a high-level recruit with NIL opportunities, the calculus is even clearer. A prospect’s social media presence, their follower count, their engagement, the conversation they generate — all of it has direct financial value now. Brands and sponsors are already evaluating athletes before they ever step on a college campus. A recruit who is publicly being pursued by multiple Power Four programs is a more attractive partner than one who keeps their recruitment private out of some misplaced sense of modesty. Content is currency. Recruiting content, specifically, is among the most engaged sports content that exists on social media. The audience is massive — coaches, fans, media, sponsors, and other athletes all watching in real time.
The athletes who understand this are not bragging. They are building. They are treating their name, image, and likeness like the asset it is, years before they’re being paid to do so. That kind of business awareness at seventeen years old is not something to discourage. It’s something to develop.
Now, some guardrails are worth acknowledging. Athletes should know what kind of offer they’re holding before they post it. Ask the coach directly. Understand where you stand on the depth chart of that program’s recruiting board. Celebrate the offer — because it is worth celebrating, because a program believed in you enough to make the call — but don’t stop working. The fake ones don’t last, so don’t stop grinding until you get a real one. And remember that nothing, not the post, not the commitment announcement, not the handshake, not even the official visit, replaces the moment you sign that Athletic Aid Agreement.
But between now and that signing day, use every tool available. Post the offers. Build the brand. Let the market work in your favor. The critics in the comments have never had to navigate a recruiting board, compete for a scholarship, or figure out how to turn a verbal conversation into a life-changing opportunity.
You have. Act accordingly.
Indiana Preps covers high school athletics, recruiting, and athlete development across the state of Indiana.