Game Theory and its Role in an Increasingly Earlier College Recruiting Process
Over the past few years, there has been a noticeable trend in increasingly earlier student athlete verbal commitments when it comes to college swimming. In compliance with NCAA rules, college coaches are not allowed to begin introducing themselves to and mailing potential college recruits until September 1st of the students’ junior year in high school. The early signing period for recruits begins in November of their senior year. Despite this one year gap between the start of the contacting period and the start of the signing process, come September 1st, students are “inundated with emails from college coaches”, with an increasing number of students often verbally (non-officially) announcing their commitment to a certain university/college.
When it comes to high school students, many potential future student athletes – especially males – are still undergoing puberty/physical changes at the ages of 16-17. Even when not accounting for physical changes, there are many students who improve their performance drastically in the 1 year time span between September of their junior year and November of their senior year. College swimming roster spaces are limited, and as such, in a rational scenario it would be in a coach’s best interest to wait a few months in order to determine which swimmers to actively pursue as recruits. The rational behind the accelerated process can be explained by the fact that each college is individually incentivized to recruit top talents before other colleges. As all colleges begin to recruit early, any advantage gained from the act is diminished/erased, along with the benefits of everyone waiting until a later stage to begin the process. The resulting trend is in line with our learnings of Game Theory and Prisoner’s Dilemma. If we take an example by having two swimming powerhouse universities, UC Berkeley and UT Austin, we could get the following scenario:
UT Austin recruits early, UC Berkeley waits: (10, -10): 10 represents UT Austin gaining recruits while -10 represents UC Berkeley losing the potential to recruit those who AT Austin earned commitments from.
UT Austin recruits early, UC Berkeley recruits early: (5, 5): Here the two 5s represent the fact that neither university would benefit over the other by going early (in this case the eventual university of the student athlete’s choice is indeterminable from the information we have).
UT Austin waits, UC Berkeley waits: (8, 8): Similar logic applies to this scenario as to the one above; neither university has an advantage over the other purely in terms of when they start recruiting. However, both universities now get 8 (arbitrary value) for having a more matured applicant pool.
UT Austin waits, UC Berkeley recruits early: (-10, 10): This is the same as the first scenario, except this time it is UC Austin that loses 10 and UC Berkeley that gains.
In the case above, the Nash Equilibrium is when both universities decide to recruit early, despite this not being the globally optimal solution.
It is important to note that, in reality, there are many other factors that come into play in this recruiting process, including but not limited to differences in universities’ swimming reputations, academic prestige, and the financial package offered to student athletes. These are factors that exceedingly strong schools can rely on to afford recruiting at a later stage than others without worries.