A planned vote on the adoption of a June signing period may not happen due to a lack of support for the issue, Yahoo's Ross Dellenger reported Thursday.
Last month it was widely believed within personnel departments in college football that the June signing period was expected to pass, with June 25, 2025, the expected target date. “We’ve already been pretty much told that’s coming down the pike,” one Power 4 general manager said. Nearly no one, however, was excited by this idea and much remained uncertain.
However, Division I commissioners, who run the National Letter of Intent program through the Collegiate Commissioners Association, surveyed their colleagues at the high school level and found the same resistance to the idea, Dellenger reported.
Commissioners surveyed high school coaches associations and most of them expressed feedback against a June period. The SEC has been public that it is against a June signing date.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) June 20, 2024
The argument against a June signing period has always been the fear that rising seniors with signed scholarship papers would damage high school football, either through players who would take their foot off the proverbial gas pedal or opt out entirely. There was also a fear of what would happen to players who signed in June but then saw their head coach depart in November or December.
The SEC came out against a June signing period, citing pushback from Texas high school coaches.
"You’ve heard some want the signing day in June," commissioner Greg Sankey said back in February. "No one has done any work on what that means for high school football. We have a responsibility to listen to the high school coaches. What we’ve heard out of the Texas group is that they do not at all support that. Everybody has to be attentive to that.”
The idea behind the June signing period is that many prospects already make commitments at the end of the month following a string of official visits. Adding a signing period there would allow coaching staffs to put those recruitments "to bed," and then take the entire month of July, which would now become a dead period, off from recruiting.
The expanding of the recruiting calendar has become an existential issue within college football following the creation of the transfer portal. The December period has been moved from the third Wednesday in the month to the first, with the idea that signing high school classes ahead of the portal opening will bring at least a pinch of sanity to the sport's busiest month.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.