Do you ever get that knot in your gut when you arrive too late at the gate counter in the airport, only to find your reserved spot on the plane has been given to another passenger?

Well, similar situations in the college football recruiting world are happening now to recruits who are hoping to lock up a scholarship offer from a prominent school.

This is what happened to Xavier Ramos of St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura, CA recently. The Oregon Ducks Football program rescinded a written scholarship offer, already accepted by Ramos, because a better player at the same position accepted an offer as well.

The problem is this incident makes Oregon look desperate for recruits, since they didn’t want to take a chance of losing both players. And recruits might now consider waiting before committing, just to see how things will shake out for them personally.

Yeah, it was a mistake, but this is kind of a “black-eye mistake” that you don’t live down easily as a program. Columnists around the West are having a field day with this issue, with comments like “this justification doesn’t fly” and Oregon “deserves a credibility hit”. Even the coach at St. Bonaventure, Todd Therrien, has said Oregon is no longer welcome there, after this incident.

Does this kind of things happen at other schools around the country? You bet.  And now, the national media is paying close attention and adding their two cents.  Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated says that while it’s “unsavory” to pull an offer, “it is common”.  Bruce Feldman of ESPN writes that this incident is “one of the ugly realities of modern-day recruiting”. Plenty of colleges send out offers en masse in order to land only a few recruits.  Arizona (136 offers) and Stanford (98) send out the most in the Pac-10, according to Rivals.com.

Now granted, there is time for Ramos to recover, and other coaches will love to play up Oregon’s mistake in order to land Ramos as a recruit. He can take solace in the fact that Army still is offering, and he’s been contacted by Arizona.  

Ramos isn’t the only victim ever.  For another denied recruit in recent memory, the road to a scholarship has been rougher than Ramos’s.  Andy Staples, later in his SI story, writes:

Greatwood: Well, son. I know you’ve already accepted our scholarship offer, but we found this other great kid who’s better than you, and we’re going to go ahead and give him your scholarship. Is that cool?

Ramos: Uhhh….

Greatwood: Outstanding! We’re all set then. Good luck with your new program.

Source: (Team Tailgate)