This post was written by Dan Tudor. He is the founder of Selling for Coaches, a training program that teaches advanced recruiting and communication skills to college coaches and athletic departments around the country. He will be blogging about recruiting training for Double-A Zone. Click here for more information about the company.

While it is still a rare occurrence, tensions between college recruiters and high school coaches are steadily rising. We are hearing about more and more instances of conflicts between college coaches and the high school coaches of the prospects they are pursuing.

The two usual scenarios go something like this:

1. The college coach pursues a high school athlete, asks for the high school coach's help, fails to sign the athlete, and blames the high school coach for not helping more with getting the athlete's commitment to the college program. That results in damaged relations between the college coach and the high school.

2. The college coach offers a high school athlete a scholarship, the athlete gives the college coach a verbal commitment and accepts the offer, staff changes or priorities change within the college program, the offer is pulled. That results in disappointment for the athlete, and outrage from the athlete's high school coach directed towards the college coach.

An similar incident involving South Carolina's football coach Steve Spurrier, and head coach Franklin Stephens and star linebacker Jonathan Davis of Tucker High School (Georgia) recently occurred.

Click here if for the full story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

There are three recruiting lessons that college coaches to take away from this event.

1. In the long run, the trust and reputation of a college coach is hurt from these situations. We need to give Coach Spurrier the benefit of the doubt in this situation. There may be behind-the-scenes issues that lead to all of this. Even if that is the case, this type of news reduces the trust - between all parties. It's not good for the handshake system of verbal commitments that much of college recruiting rests upon.

2. Look for prospects to feel more comfortable with the idea of breaking early verbal commitments to college coaches. College coaches are increasingly asking me about the right strategy for continuing to recruit their prospects even after they give a verbal commitment to their program. Why? Because more and more, college coaches are seeing examples of their prospects breaking a verbal commitment to a college and signing with a different school. I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase in the number of "de-commits" by either side, to the point that the NCAA may need to address the situation in the not-so-distant future.

3. College coaches will need to develop "second phase" recruiting strategies. Recruiting a prospect after they have committed verbally or promised to enroll at a college (in the case of non-scholarship and Division III schools) will take on new urgency. Coaches will need to focus heavily on keeping the interest and commitment of their prospects.

Which party is to blame for all this? I'll let smarter people than me to figure that one out.

Here's what I do know: This trend will begin to chip away at early verbal commitments that are the foundation of today's college recruiting, and that's not good for either side.