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1. There’s kicking the can forward. And then there’s punting it beyond line of sight.
Per a report, the NCAA Football Oversight Committee last week has recommended the recruiting dead period be extended to April 15 – an additional 3 ½ months – in continued response to the pandemic.
Before folks go bashing the NCAA, know that this committee is basically composed of an athletics director of each conference – so it stands to be the voice of at least some schools, if not the majority within each league.
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The NCAA Division I Council is expected to approve the recommendation at its meeting Wednesday.
A dead period was imposed in mid-March and has been extended a handful of times, most recently in a September decision that pushed the date to Jan. 1.
While this observer has disagreed with the decision, we could at least buy some of the rationale in preventing prospects from visiting in-person with college coaching staffs on campuses this fall.
Whatever exterior presences you can rule out from exposing current coaches or players to COVID-19, in order to keep the college football show going on from week to week, by all means.
Yet the vast majority of teams will be done in another month, and then you’re asking a considerable number of high school seniors to sign on at colleges plenty haven’t visited yet, and with coaches many haven’t met face-to-face yet.
Prevention and discretion are important, the case can be made. No argument against the virus being taken seriously.
But outlawing human interaction at a football facility when it’s shown to be perfectly manageable at even your local variety store with considerably lower standards – c’mon folks, what are we doing here?
If the recruit side doesn’t want to go, or there’s a college staffer who doesn’t want to participate, everyone’s going to understand.
But our bet is administrators are more scared of a potential negative public reaction should a case surface during a recruiting visit than actual medical ramifications.
Your question will inquire as to what Clemson will do in response to the prolonged dead period, and we would reply that the Tigers will start looking to cross those bridges soon.
Its elite junior day in late January is the first leg of its annual membership drive, and there’s time for Clemson’s staff to come up with something creative. As for the rest of this cycle, that’s a case-by-case basis.
2. It warrants highlighting that both of the juniors who committed to Clemson within the last month had taken visits to campus and met the staff prior to the NCAA moratorium.
So familiarity is still involved.
Furthermore, so-called “unofficial unofficial” visits have happened where a prospect travels in on his own accord to attend a game and/or take a self-guided tour of the school.
The amount of those such visits projects to increase, in our estimation, as many prospects will want to advance their recruitments and lack reason to think full-fledged visits will be an option by the spring.
With that, we turn to a high-profile prospect slated to return to Clemson next week.
