Notre Dame Evaluating Pros & Cons Of Earlier Recruiting Official Visits
Year one of a new era with the early signing period received a thumbs up from the Notre Dame coaching staff.
By signing 21 players during the three-day Dec. 20-22 stretch of the NCAA’s new recruiting calendar, the Fighting Irish coaches unanimously agreed it was beneficial and allowed them to concentrate much more on filling final needs in January and February, which they did with six more additions to the fold this Feb. 7, which became Signing Day II.
“Our situation is a little bit unique because ultimately the guys that want Notre Dame know it and feel it, and that's why ours is a place that should do well in the early signing period,” said Notre Dame recruiting coordinator Brian Polian, who also doubles as the special teams coordinator. “Twenty-one is a good number.
“…The last three weeks of recruiting at any school is about disinformation and about other schools trying to confuse 17- and 18-year-old kids — and to know that you had the vast majority of your class locked up, it was good.”
Head coach Brian Kelly noted how in January multiple coaches from the Irish staff were able to visit one prospect at his home on the same day because they didn’t have to be elsewhere to “babysit.”
“The ability for each one of these recruits to really get to know more of the staff is, I think, a great advantage,” he said. “When you're recruiting about only eight players from the middle of December through February (not including getting an early jump on 2019 prospects), you really can be on each one of those players individually. That's what is required to finish the way we finished.”
However, because Notre Dame recruits nationally — it signed players from 15 different states this cycle — Polian said there is still more work involved than the average school. He can especially appreciate that because California, where the Irish signed three players (tied for most this year), is one of his territories. In California, high school playoffs often extend well into December.
“The one thing that caught me off guard was geographically people move at a different pace in recruiting,” Polian said. “I don't think there were many players out west that were in a hurry to sign in December. A lot of the West Coast kids took it all the way through February.
“But what happened was a guy that in December who may have been focused on two or three places — on January 12th another 10 schools that had not been recruiting him at all, all of a sudden step up and offer.
“People's boards started to take shape and names came off and you said, ‘Okay, we didn't get this guy, where are we going next?' All of a sudden people were recruiting outside of their normal geographic footprints … Penn State offering in mid-January to guys in California was a little bit odd.”
New Debate: When To Visit?
Although this year marked the first go-round of the early signing period, a crucial element will be added to the now 2019 recruiting cycle.
In the recently completed 2018 recruiting cycle, the “old rules” of official visits still applied in that a prospect could start taking official visits only after his first day of classes his senior year of high school.
For the 2019 recruiting cycle, a prospect now can take his official visits — meaning one that is paid for by the host school — during his junior year of high school in a three-month window from April-June.
For Kelly and Polian, this creates a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, it allows them to accelerate the recruiting process and there is the potential to receive verbal commitments earlier. On the other, if a prospect takes an official visit during the spring, then he would have to pay for it on his own dime to attend a game in the fall, when the football atmosphere is at its peak.
A prospect is still allowed only five total official visits. Polian is fine with that, but he would like to amend it to where he could take two official visits to the same school.
“If somebody says to us from a far distance, ‘I want to come make a visit to your place in the spring,’ ideally you want them to see a game atmosphere here, as well,” Polian said. “There's nothing like Notre Dame Stadium and this campus on a game weekend. Now, we're going to have to get into some strategic decisions about when do we want young men to take visits. Do we want them here in June, or do you want them here in September when you've got Michigan under the lights and a national TV audience?”
Part of those tactical decisions is the pressure that is involved on how early to legitimately offer someone when the staff might be looking at higher-ranked prospects on their recruiting board. How will the said prospect develop as a senior, if at all? The month of May used to be a time for full spring evaluations by coaching staffs, but now quicker “yea or nay” decisions might need to be made.
“When are those visits going to start, when do you end them — that's really what we're trying to figure out at this point relative to tweaking and how that's going to work,” Kelly said.
“The real work [involved in early signing] now begins with the early visits.”
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