Stop crying about BYU's 'advantage'

Now that top-rated quarterback Jake Heaps has verbally committed to play football at BYU, it stands to reason some people would whine about it.

It's all unfair, you know. Heaps is LDS, and those Mormon kids ALWAYS go to BYU. The church hits 'em with the guilt trip, and there they go, marching in lock step, down to Provo. Then they complete those two-year missions, and that helps the Cougars even more. Their players come back bigger, stronger and more mature.

It's not fair.

I have only one thing to say to those who feel that way: Grow up.

Everyone uses their recruiting advantages.

The pros and cons BYU encounters in football balance out. Which is why the program is able to compete on an upper-division level in the first place.

The issue came to light nine days ago, when Heaps called a press conference in downtown Salt Lake City to announce he was going to BYU. At the same time, two other highly regarded LDS players said they would follow.

This brought the usual groans from opposing fan bases. Among the most vocal critics was former Washington assistant coach Dick Baird, who took on the issue of BYU and recruiting in a column for the Washington Huskies' fan Web site Dawgman.com.

Baird resurrected an old complaint, intimating that BYU bends the recruiting rules by contacting players through ecclesiastical authorities. You know the gripe: coach Bronco Mendenhall can't talk to a player as early as he wants, or as many times as he wants, but the bishop sure can.

"Somehow, BYU has been able to communicate almost at will with him and they have done so through the church," he wrote. "The LDS Church is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, and they are organized all the way down to the ward level. It is very difficult to beat them on a Mormon kid, because they pull out all stops to keep their young in the fold."

Yet if you believe Heaps, he said he felt no religious pressure whatsoever to attend BYU. Either way, Baird went on to say the NCAA's deferred eligibility rule gives BYU "an unfair advantage over every other school in the country."

Most student-athletes have five years to complete four years of eligibility, but missionaries get seven.