‘Worst week of my coaching career’: An unprecedented NCAA early signing period begins

Walker Gantt got the call on, of all days, Halloween.

Gantt, a senior at Greenbrier High in Evans, Georgia, had been verbally committed to play golf at nearby Augusta University for over five months. But now, just a couple weeks from making that decision official during the NCAA’s early signing period for the Class of 2025, he was listening to Jaguars head coach Steven Paine, on the other line, break the unfortunate news:

Due to looming, NCAA-mandated roster limits, Paine no longer had a spot for Gantt next fall, and Gantt was being de-committed.

“It was a huge surprise,” Gantt said. “Those next couple days, those were brutal for me, I’m not going to lie. I was panicking. I wanted to get a spot. I was heartbroken that I got my opportunity to play college golf taken away from me.”

Gantt’s story, however, is not unique – not this year, not amid this unprecedented signing period.

Last month, the U.S. District Court of Northern California granted preliminary approval to the pending $2.78 billion House v. NCAA settlement that, if finalized, would most notably pave the way for schools to directly compensate their student-athletes via a revenue-sharing model while also removing scholarship limitations across all Division-I sports. That’s the good news, at least for players. The bad news is that the NCAA, as part of this agreement, is also planning on imposing roster limits in each sport by next fall, a decision that will see thousands of D-I playing opportunities disappear with the Class of 2025 experiencing the first crop of casualties – players, like Gantt, who had their verbal commitments revoked in the eleventh hour.

The balloons, the cakes, all that team gear? Better hope mom and dad kept the receipts.

Men’s and women’s golf figures to lose hundreds of current roster spots once those sports’ programs begin operating with roster maximums of nine players – or, at least in some instances, fewer. The Southeastern Conference recently told its golf coaches that it will cap their rosters at eight players, while there are serious rumblings of other schools going below that to satisfy Title IX requirements.

While some golf programs, especially on the women’s side, already carry small rosters, others do not. Oregon currently features a 15-man squad, of which just three of those players are seniors. Oklahoma, the fourth-ranked team in the country, has only three seniors among 13 players – and three recruits expected to sign this week. The list goes on.

So, what are these coaches, who were just slapped with this harsh reality back in May, to do? NCAA rules (the few that are left) prohibit coaches from commenting on prospective student-athletes, so coaches reached by GolfChannel.com were unable to speak to specifics. Several coaches preferred not to comment as they had yet to make any decisions. Others hinted that their cuts would likely come from their existing rosters, but not until after this season. A few, however, confirmed that tough choices had already been made.

“Was told an hour ago that I can only sign one kid, and I committed to two over a year ago,” one Power-4 women’s coach said. “Imagine making this phone call. Heartbreaking. The situation we have been put in unfortunately.”

Added a Power-4 men’s coach who had to cut a recruit of his own: “Worst week of my coaching career.”

At least four SEC men’s programs have informed prospective student-athletes that they will no longer be able to honor their commitments because of roster constraints. That list includes Florida, which had to rescind its offer to Lorenzo Rodriguez, a high-school state individual champion out of Miami’s Belen Jesuit; the Gators will still sign three players this week, including U.S. Junior champion Trevor Gutschewski, while Rodriguez has been flooded with interest from coaches with roster space. Surely, Rodriguez will soon join other recruits who have landed in new homes, such Ethan Lien of Cupertino, California, who had his offer yanked by new Cal coach Michael Wilson this summer but on Tuesday announced he had committed to UC San Diego, which plays out of the Big West Conference.

“It’s been a difficult few months,” Lien said, “but it’s taught me to come back even stronger and face adversity head on.”

Mitchell Maier of Richmond, Texas, who thought he was headed to Texas A&M a few weeks ago, also revealed Tuesday he’d be signing after all, just with North Texas out of the American Athletic Conference.

“I plan on coming back stronger than before,” Maier said.

It’s also possible that while coaches aren’t planning to break any bad news to their new signings right now, language being written into some aid agreements – which have replaced the recently eliminated national letter of intent (NLI) – would allow schools to terminate those contracts to comply with any settlement-related mandates (i.e. roster limits). Currently, NLIs obligate student-athletes and institutions to honor their agreements for one academic year, with few exceptions, though the new aid agreements provide more flexibility, especially to the student-athlete.

“There are going to be kids that sign next week and never step foot on campus,” predicted one Power-4 women’s coach.

How each golf program will be affected by the totality of the NCAA’s settlement is still uncertain, but one early consensus is that mid-majors could benefit, at least talent-wise, from this new era of trickle-down recruiting. One mid-major coach said he’s already got a list of five or six guys who have been told they will be cut or had their offers pulled by Power-4 programs. Others are keeping spots open for when the transfer portal explodes with castoffs on April 16.

“These top schools have been plucking guys from our rosters for years,” another mid-major coach said. “It’s funny how the tables have turned now.”

Coaches also agree that, in many cases, players could end up in better situations where they’ll receive more playing time as opposed to being buried on the depth chart.

When Augusta retracted his offer, Gantt immediately began doing research on the other schools he had considered during his initial recruitment. He narrowed down a list to programs whom he thought may have room for him, and then he started calling those coaches, one by one. It didn’t take long for Kennesaw State head coach Bryant Odom, a friend of Gantt’s dad who had courted Gantt hard, to snatch Gantt up.

“He was my first phone call when we could start talking to coaches, my first official visit, my first offer, and he never wavered,” Gantt said of Odom, whose Owls are currently ranked No. 48 in the country (Augusta is No. 112). “He always believed in me and my abilities. … With it being so late in the game and knowing that all these teams are having to deal with the same stuff, when Kennesaw said they had a spot open, I knew I had to jump on it.”

Gantt’s second door opened, but in this rapidly changing NCAA landscape, surely not everyone will be as lucky.