As long as the guy is given his honest chance and the team acted in good faith I don't think most people would object. I know there was a period in the '60s and '70s that some teams -- Alabama was supposedly a top violator -- offered scholarships to their second or third choices just to keep them away from competing schools, then ran them off when it was too late to sign elsewhere. But the fact is the scholarship is a one-year tender, renewable, and it is not a marriage license. So it seems reasonable that a guy with Johnson's rep for straight shooting would not hesitate to tell a player he is not going to play and might be better off elsewhere.
