The Diffusion of Innovation in College Recruiting
It is a well-known fact that high-powered Division I NCAA athletic teams have begun to push the pace for recruiting high school athletes. For top 10 ranked athletic teams that are competing to secure players from a selective list of top recruits, getting a leg up on the competition is becoming increasingly important. Due to this drive to secure commitments from the nation’s top recruits, the athletic world has witnessed college recruiting take place earlier and earlier each year. In his article about the increasing amount of college lacrosse coaches accelerating their recruiting processes, Zach Schonbrun illustrates the idea that college lacrosse recruiting has now become a race to secure early commitments from high school athletes (NY Times, 2012).
What started as a trend in only the top two or three ranked DI lacrosse schools has spread to essentially every team in the top 20. The coaches of these teams are forced to recruit younger athletes with each proceeding year in order to stay competitive with the top ranked teams that are driving the early recruiting. Although some of the coaches feel uncomfortable about recruiting so early, most of them feel that they must continue to lock in early commitments. It is now customary for the top ranked recruits to make verbal commitments to the college of their choice early in their sophomore years of high school (Schonbrun, NY Times, 2012). This trend has rapidly swept across the top 20 Division I lacrosse teams, and it is now routine for a team to close out their entire recruiting class before any of their recruits have reached their junior year of high school. Many skeptics, including many Division I college coaches, have questioned this new trend in recruiting, as there are many potential flaws inherent in sealing commitments from sophomores in high school (Schonbrun, NY Times, 2012). No one knows how much a high school sophomore will develop physically or mentally. There are also a plethora of unknown variables that cannot possibly be adequately considered when recruiting a sophomore: injuries, potential off-field problems, SAT scores, further skill development, changes in work ethic, etc. However, even though this wide array of unknown variables exists, more and more Division I lacrosse teams join the race in trying to secure early recruiting classes (Schonbrun, NY Times, 2012).
Zach Schonbrun’s NY Times article about the spread of the race for earlier commitments vividly reflects the concept of the diffusion of innovations, a facet of cascading behavior in networks. The diffusion of innovations refers to the network phenomenon of the spread of novel information or technology from person to person within a network as people are influenced to adopt new ideas or practices. The diffusion of innovations exemplifies cascading behavior in networks, as it is defined by the spreading of imitation behavior within a network group. In the case depicted by Schonbrun’s article, the innovation that is being imitated throughout the Division I college lacrosse network is the tactic of securing early commitments from young high school athletes. This novel tactic was first implemented by the top two or three ranked teams; however, as other teams began to see the benefits of securing the nation’s top ranked youngsters, other teams began to imitate this behavior by adopting this new innovation.
The spread of this new practice has followed the trend characteristic to that of innovation diffusion. The novelty of the tactic and the initial lack of understanding about the results it would give originally proved to be too risky for many members of the lacrosse network to implement it. However, once the benefits of the practice were evident, adoption was more widely accepted. Also, those starting the trend (the early adopters) were those of high status in the network with considerable influence on the other members of the network, and their actions could be easily observed and imitated by others. The early adopters in the case described were the top tier Division I lacrosse coaches, who carry considerable weight in terms of the actions of the division in general. The success of an innovation within a network can be linked to complexity, observability, trialability, and compatibility. These features all apply very well to the practice described in Schonbrun’s article. The tactic of recruiting athletes early in high school is not complex in theory or practice, and it was easily observable while being implemented by the top tier teams. The tactic was also easy to attempt, as a coach could slowly try to secure a small amount of early commitments over time as a trial run, and subsequently assess the performance of those recruits in college. The practice could also be easily implemented and was compatible with most recruiting processes. The issue illustrated in Schonbrun’s article clearly demonstrates cascading network behavior through the diffusion of innovations. In this case, one can certainly see how a novel practice took root within a network and subsequently diffused through the network as more and more people began to imitate the behavior of powerful members of the network.
–Abe Froman
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/sports/unease-in-lacrosse-amid-race-for-earlier-commitments.html