Colleges now focusing on underclassmen in always-shifting recruiting calendar

Share

Every year around this time college football recruiting comes out of its post-holiday hibernation, otherwise known as the dead period, and fires up again. The NCAA-mandated dead period came to an end Monday morning, and high schools across the state saw an influx of college coaches in their buildings on Tuesday.

Yet unlike other years, this recruiting period took on a new significance.

"College coaches at this time of the year are usually babysitting its verbally committed seniors and making sure that they are all set to sign in February," Phillips head coach Troy McAllister said. "Now with the early signing period in December, most of the FBS and FCS schools are all done recruiting the 2018 kids and are now going all in on underclassmen."

McAllister reported eight colleges — Dartmouth, Iowa State, Purdue, Penn State, Morgan State, Syracuse, South Dakota State and West Virginia — came though his school on Tuesday and saw more than a few Wildcat underclassmen land verbal scholarship offers.

"I had a junior (defensive back Fabian McCray), a sophomore (defensive back Ronald Pledger) and even a freshman (defensive tackle Dominick Bass) pick up scholarship offers yesterday," he said. "We are expecting more and more coaches to come into school this week. A few of the coaches came into check on the seniors but even they are starting to work on the next class. This has always been a busy time of the year with recruiting, but now college coaches want to move ahead and get after the younger kids earlier than ever."

"We've had several college coaches in school so far," Bolingbrook head coach John Ivlow said. "And none of them have talked about any of the seniors. Zero. The game plan for them was to finish up the seniors in December and focus this month completely on the next class and that's exactly how it's gone."

Ivlow also feels that with the implementation of the early signing period, seniors now more than ever need to make a much quicker college decision or get left with far more limited college options.

"Kids who waited on the bigger level schools to offer them are still waiting, and it doesn't look promising. Kids are going to need to make a decision earlier and earlier otherwise they stand to lose out on some good college offers and options."

Contact Us