Oral Roberts and the Fundamentals of Recruiting
Published on 14-Apr-2017 by Raoul Duke
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College basketball recruiting is an insanely competitive environment.
This is true even for the higher profile, major conference schools.
Oral Roberts University is not one of those schools.
For whatever reason, the small, private Christian college located in Tulsa has apparently changed its recruiting guidelines in recent years in an effort to make winning close to impossible.
Well, when school president Billy Wilson was hired in 2013, he instituted a policy where only Christian athletes could be recruited to play basketball for the school.
But wait, there's more.
Kids with tattoos were considered off-limits, and if they were lucky enough to find a Christian athlete who could ball a little, the dude would have to pass a "faith exam" to qualify.
As former Oral Roberts coach and current Kansas boss Bill Self correctly pointed out, this type of madness would logically narrow your recruiting pool.
Predictably, this change in policy has caused diminishing returns for the program, which has culminated in the firing of longtime head coach Scott Sutton after a disastrous 8-22 season.
To add further indignity, Sutton wasn't told he'd been fired and found out via social media.
Some of his former players are not amused:
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No word yet on who will be taking over this plum assignment.
Good luck with all that.