COMMENTARY

By Mike Farrell

updated 12:19 a.m. ET Jan. 18, 2006

The recruiting game has become more and more about who you can trust and who you can't. Can you trust 17-year-old kids who give you a verbal commitment six months before signing day? Will you stop recruiting a certain position because a hot-shot stud has told you for weeks that he's heading your way?

On the flip side, can recruits trust coaches who tell them they won't recruit any other players at their position? Is it safe for either side to stop entertaining interest from other parties? In the case of Springdale, Ark., quarterback Mitch Mustain, trust hasn't been much more than a word thrown about by both player and coaches.

Mustain, the nation's No. 2 quarterback and arguably the most heavily recruited player ever out of his home state, wanted to get the recruiting process over with before his season started. The 6-foot-3, 208-pounder wanted to focus on his senior year and a state title. So when push came to shove in August as the season loomed, Mustain told Arkansas coach Houston Nutt he was coming to Fayetteville, seemingly to save Nutt's job and the program. A bond of trust had been formed.

It would soon be broken.

After a 4-7 season, the second straight losing campaign under Nutt, the coach decided some changes needed to be made. Nutt fired quarterbacks coach Roy Wittke, the man responsible for developing Matt Jones into an SEC standout and the QB guru Mustain was looking forward to working under — the quarterback guru who Mustain was told he'd be working with at Arkansas. The Mustain family heard about the firing from newspaper reporters well before it was announced and well before Nutt told his future star. At least that's how the story goes.

So Mustain decided to abandon his word — as he felt Nutt had — and de-commit from Arkansas and open his recruitment back up in early December. A few weeks later, Mustain's head coach at Springdale, Gus Malzahn, was hired as the new offensive coordinator for Arkansas. Still, Mustain didn't budge. By this time he had his eyes and heart set on another coach and program — the one Charlie Weis runs in that little town of South Bend, Ind. Now it was time to test Weis' level of trust.

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Weis had taken verbal commitments from two top quarterbacks during the summer, Pennsylvania slinger Zach Frazer and Chicago star Demetrius Jones. He told both that two was his maximum at quarterback and he wouldn't take a third. Weis was also assuring super recruit Jimmy Clausen, the top quarterback in the 2007 class and one of the most hyped signal-callers in years, that Frazer and Jones would be his competition at Notre Dame should he decide to come. At the time of all these promises, Weis had no idea the Springdale soap opera would unfold.

To his credit, Weis never offered Mustain again, standing by his word not only to his two quarterback commitments but also to Clausen, who just so happened to be on campus Saturday for a Notre Dame junior day. But you know it had to be tempting. Great quarterbacks to Weis are like dates with Pamela Anderson, they don't come along often at all, but if you get one, tremendous things could happen. Passing up on Mustain had to go against every fiber of his offensive coordinator being, but it was the right thing to do and Weis knows it.

In this little game of recruiting where trust is such a big deal and is betrayed as often as Terrell Owens says something stupid, chalk one up on the good side for Weis. And guess what? Mustain signed with Arkansas and kept his commitment as well.

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