How the proposed college football recruiting changes could be a boon for northern schools
The NCAA is considering a proposal that would dramatically alter the football recruiting experience.
Most notable is the creation of two early signing periods, including one that begins the last Wednesday of June in between a prospect’s junior and senior years of high school. For the most part, recruits are currently only allowed to sign a binding national letter of intent on the first Wednesday of February during their senior year of high school.
So far, the debate over the proposal has centered on balancing the benefits for college programs to lock up prospects early with the need for the recruits to maintain the flexibility they currently enjoy if they were to improve during their senior year or coaches leave their positions due to firings or job jumping.
The less-discussed and perhaps unintended consequence however is something coaches at northern schools believe will be a major boon for their programs:
The weather.
“This rule will help us,” Minnesota head coach Tracy Claeys said. “There’s no question about that.”
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The way the current recruiting cycle works, the majority of official campus visits occur in December, January and early February of a player’s senior year. Syracuse coach Dino Babers, for instance, estimates three-quarters of his program’s official visits come in January.
That time of year in Central New York, or just about anywhere above the Mason-Dixon line, can be, well, tough … tough to get to, tough to walk around in, tough to get a kid to see the full scope of campus and the surrounding community. (The average high in Syracuse in January is 32 degrees. In Minneapolis, it’s 24. Snow and ice so regularly drop from the sky, it can wear out even the most hardened local.)
If suddenly a portion of those visits, perhaps even a majority, shift to May and June, as the proposal would allow? Now it’s an average of 78 in Syracuse and 79 in Minneapolis.
“Syracuse in the summer?” Babers said. “It’s really nice here.”
For decades now, coaches in the North have lamented the challenges of trying to show their campuses at the worst possible time. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh joked recently that this fall’s warmer-than-usual temperatures in Ann Arbor have been a positive.
“Global warming is good for Michigan,” Harbaugh cracked. “It’s good for recruiting.”
In the winter, the logistics of getting players to campus can be strained by storms that bring cancelled flights or dangerous highways. The allure of a warm weekend down South also tends to draw local recruits to check out some SEC or ACC programs that they weren’t even seriously considering – there’s nothing like a kid in say, Detroit (and his parents), watching it snow outside as a school in Florida offers a free trip.
The issue isn’t a big deal at the top levels of the sport. A traditional power such as Ohio State or Michigan, for instance, is always going to be able to get great players regardless of a little cold and snow – currently the Buckeyes and Notre Dame have recruiting classes ranked in the top 10 nationally. Nor is an Alabama or Florida State reliant on frost-bitten Northerners seeking a bit of winter sunshine.
Little to none of that will change.
For the programs at the next level, however, any recruiting advantage or reshuffling can be considerable.
“If you come during a cold January weekend, we may give a campus tour in an SUV, pointing things out through the window, not getting out,” said Mitch Moore, a recruiting coordinator at Iowa State. “You come in the summer and you get a great tour in a golf cart tour of the whole place, seeing more, getting out and walking around more. Our campus is really pretty. It’s a big difference.”
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Claeys said one of Minnesota’s strengths is the chance to combine the campus feel of a Big Ten institution with life in a major city. In the spring and summer, Minneapolis comes alive with street festivals and outdoor concerts, bike paths and physical activities.
“There are so many things to do,” Claeys said. “We don’t hide the fact that it is cold and snowy in the winter. We’re very honest and tell kids, ‘If that bothers you, then this isn’t the place for you.’ But if they come in the summer, they don’t have to envision what a great day is like here. You get up here and it’s just pretty nice.”
Claeys believes that if he can get a recruit to campus, there is a good chance he’ll want to stay. “I think more kids want to go to school where there is a lot going on,” he said of the urban backdrop. Getting there can be a challenge though for all these schools.
First, who gets excited about a mid-January trip to Iowa? Then there is the travel, where flights and roads can be ravaged by snow and ice. Those disappear in the summer, even, or especially, for local kids that will remain the bulk of a recruiting class.
“In June, a high school player in Chicago can leave his house at 4 o’clock on a Friday and have a beautiful drive to Ames,” said Moore, the Iowa State recruiting coordinator. “In January, it’s dark at 5 o’clock and you don’t know what the interstate will be like.”
Moore laughs at the time he was driving Sheldon Croney, a three-star recruit from Bakersfield, Calif., to the Des Moines Airport at the end of a January 2015 recruiting weekend. The weather was a predictable mess and only getting worse, including signs on Interstate 35 flashing an ominous message: “Snow Blizzard Ahead. Recommend Not Driving.”
Recruiters are salesmen and “Blizzard Ahead” isn’t exactly the kind of closing message you want when you’re trying to convince a kid to move from California.
“I’m pointing out this window, ‘Hey, look at that’ at that window, ‘Hey, look at this,’ anything so he doesn’t see the signs,” Moore said.
Croney signed with the Cyclones anyway, the program’s family atmosphere and improving facilities overwhelming any meteorological concerns. Moore wouldn’t have blamed him for not returning though.
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The flipped recruiting calendar might not just benefit schools in the North, but also actually hurt schools in the South. Talk around the proposed rule change says that only a small number of very committed prospects will sign – “Your mom went to Syracuse, your dad went to Syracuse, you’re coming to Syracuse, why waste four other schools’ time?” Babers said.
However that was the expectation also when men’s basketball established an early signing period in the 1980s. The move from a spring, post-season signing day to a November preseason day also, however, pushed everything earlier.
The very best players who hold the most leverage often still wait until spring – just seven of the top 25 recruits per Rivals.com are verbally committed and set to sign next month. Most everyone else jumped at offers though – 107 of the next 125 prospects (85.6 percent, with more coming in each day) are currently committed and expected to sign early.
There is reason to expect something similar will happen with football also, which would make late June, not early February, the most important part of the recruiting year. As such, the June visitation period will become increasingly important, and for every perfect day of weather in the North there can be a corresponding hot, humid and uncomfortable one in the South. (Average high for Baton Rouge in June: 91). Resorts in Wisconsin and Michigan and New York have catered to Southerners seeking good summer weather for generations. Suddenly it’s a kid in Texas that might want a weekend away.
“It’s almost a reverse effect,” Moore said. “December in Houston it’s 75, 80 and beautiful. Here it’s 22 and freezing. In June, it’s 95 and humid there and [people] can’t go out. Here it’s perfect; we live outside in the summer.”
There are additional benefits, the coaches and staffers say.
Babers, for one, believes spreading the official visits out over three distinct periods will allow his staff to get to know players better and, in turn, players and their families to get to know the coaches and institution, which he thinks is a benefit. The more this is about substance and the less about just being able to get to campus, the better for a place such as Syracuse.
“Right now we have 15 or 20 official visits in one January weekend,” Babers said. “It’s hard to make the time for each recruit. I think it’s extremely beneficial for us.”
No one is suggesting that mid-pack Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC programs will suddenly land top-five recruiting classes.
Just getting a few more players, winning a few more recruiting battles, having a few more chances can make a huge difference though when you’re trying to build something. Not having recruits flipped in the final days seems to be the main focus of the debate thus far, but a massive altering of the recruiting calendar may be the hidden, but most significant impact.
“This is a positive for a lot of people,” Claeys said.
“Let’s get it done,” Babers said.
The NCAA Division-I Collegiate Commissioners Association is expected to vote in April at a meeting in Indianapolis. That is just when the weather gets nice there.
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