For clarification purposes…
There is no guarantee of scholarship at all. The player needs to make the team, maintain their spot once they make it through all four years and maintain minimum thresholds for their grades
Ethically, the schools abide by their commitments. However, if the landscape changes and that school is making an effort to maintain a certain competitive level, they have to change with the landscape. This may affect their ability to maintain existing commitments.
Many people think that a commitment for a full ride scholarship is like signing a contract. Once it is signed, the school is on the hook for four years with all expenses paid. That is not the case at all. The coach and athletic director are tasked with managing their scholarships and the schools are limited by how many they can offer as well.
Commitments cannot be signed until you are within two years of enrolling and can only be delayed a maximum of one year.
A player like Mews is a super elite player. He will walk on to Michigan next year and likely be their #1 D-Man. He can pretty much do whatever he wants. So, that isn’t an issue for him. But, if you are talking about players you may have drafted that have commitments and they are not in that first round OHL pick category, there could be some deviations to consider.
Again, it is not in the school’s best interest to mess around with commitments but you have to think they are going to have to work around a lot of different situations over the course of the next year or so. I think things will be very fluid. How that changes or affects the landscape is yet to be determined but there is no doubt things will change.
Here is a good resource:
A key part of the college sports recruiting process is understanding how athletic scholarships work. See how much money you can expect to be offered.
www.ncsasports.org