This article originally appeared with The Red & Black on July 3, 2015 and can also be found here.

Verbal agreements in the business world don’t guarantee much. They are worth even less in college football recruiting.

College coaches can extend written offers to high school players from Aug. 1 until the first Wednesday in February, aside from a month-long dead period in mid-December. One of the most useful tactics for recruits is verbally committing, which means the player pledges to attend a school. The problem is these commitments are non-binding until pen hits paper on National Signing Day, which leads to chaos when players back out.

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