Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
The wait is over for players
New college signing period runs Dec. 20-22
CORAL GABLES — For years, the first Wednesday in February has been a holiday of sorts for college football fans.
As National Signing Day played out across the country, top-notch prospects would formally sign their letters of intent, solidifying oral commitments and helping college programs round out their rosters.
That’s all about to change, with the NCAA implementing a new signing period for college prospects that will begin Wednesday and run through Dec. 22. Yes, undecided prospects can hold off and wait until February to sign, as in the past. But most college coaches and experts across the country expect this new signing period to become the major event on the recruiting calendar.
And those coaches have adjusted accordingly, many of them putting a premium on making sure commitments are finalized as early as possible. And as one might expect, many of the top-notch prospects have fallen in line, saying they’re willing, too, to formalize their commitments. In some cases, they’re also willing to enroll early, forgoing their final semesters of high school to begin the transition to college life in January.
“This will be the main signing day now, and the one in February will be about getting the meat that’s been left off the bone,” said Steve Wiltfong, recruiting director for
247Sports.com. “There’s still going to be some meat, but I think college coaches want to get their kids, as many kids, signed in December so they don’t have to worry about that final month. They’ve pushed up their visits to make this happen, had their big recruiting weekends in December. … They want to get those kids signed on Wednesday so they can focus in on a few targets and start getting ahead on 2019 [recruiting].”
At Miami, where coach Mark Richt has put together one of the top recruiting classes in the country, the Hurricanes are expecting to host approximately 20 committed prospects who will be making their official visits to Coral Gables this weekend. The hope, in Richt’s eyes, is that those players who long ago said they wished to play for the Hurricanes will begin forging bonds with their future teammates.
Miami’s staff doesn’t see this weekend so much as an opportunity to sell the Hurricanes program to the likes of five-star running back Lorenzo Lingard or fourstar tight end Brevin Jordan. That’s already been done. What Richt wants to do this weekend is remind those players and their families why they’ve chosen Miami – and to begin preparing them for what’s next, including Wednesday’s signings.
“We’re not recruiting anybody this weekend. We’re celebrating a decision that’s already been made,” said Richt, who expects most of Miami’s 21 committed prospects to sign Wednesday. “It’s about celebration, getting to know the guys that will be your friends for the rest of your life. It’s about parents getting to know each other. It’s about education, what to expect next. As far as when you move in, what do I need? What do I have to do to get my application process done? It’s our strength coach saying, ‘When you first get here, here’s what’s going to happen.’ It’s more educational about the prospect of becoming a college student rather than trying to sell somebody on coming to Miami.”
But recruiting is different at every school, and while most Power Five programs hope to lock in their recruiting classes over the next few days, things may be different at Group of Five schools or at schools that have undergone coaching changes over the past month.
New coaching staffs at both Florida State and Florida, for example, have been scrambling to secure prospects that were maybe recruited by their predecessors or have been trying to convince prospects to hold off on signing this weekend in an effort to bring them to campus and secure a commitment ahead of February’s signing period.
Entering the final weekend before the early signing period, Florida has commitments from just 12 prospects, while Florida State has nine commitments. Neither is ranked among 247Sports.com’s top 30 recruiting classes, with Florida taking the No. 32 spot and Florida State at No. 47.
“That’s another log on the fire. I think there’s going to be less guys for Florida State to try and flip late because they’re going to be signed,” Wiltfong said. “They’re trying to do two things right now – trying to convince kids to come to Florida State and trying to get them not to sign anywhere else so they can come and visit Florida State in January.”
At Florida Atlantic, where the Owls won the Conference USA Championship and are set to play in their first bowl game since 2008, coach Lane Kiffin has secured commitments from five prospects. But he hardly seemed worried about that this week, his focus instead on preparing for Tuesday’s matchup against Akron in the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl.
“It’s going to be what your final class looks like. There may be a lot, there may be a little, just based on which ones come to you and which guys end up signing,” Kiffin said. “Some aren’t. A lot aren’t. I don’t think there’s too much attention placed on this because what will matter most is the final class when it’s all combined.”
And like Kiffin, coaches across America have found themselves having to balance the work of bowl preparations with recruiting, everything heightened and sped up because of the early signing period.
Richt noted that while he and his staff have been on the road recruiting and have been unable to game plan together, coaches have compiled and exchanged information as they’ve continued studying Wisconsin, their opponent in the Dec. 30 Orange Bowl.
By the time the staff meets Monday after this recruiting weekend is finished, he’s confident they’ll be prepared when the Hurricanes resume practices next week.
“Any time we’re not in a home or in a school or entertaining someone on the weekend, we’re either at the office or we have laptops that have all the information on our opponent,” he said.
Ultimately, with this being the first December signing period, there could be hiccups. Coaches will learn from the experience, and so too will younger prospects that are watching.
Whether it will be a success – for schools and players alike – remains to be seen. But for those prospects who already know what they want to do, the next week could mark the end of a process that can sometimes be stressful and overwhelming, exciting though it may be.
And for the growing number of early college enrollees who in the past often missed out on the chance to celebrate their signings with family and friends, this week could be something to remember.
“I think it allows people to say what their intentions are and make it final. In the past, the young men that were mid-year enrollees, they didn’t have a date. They didn’t have a ceremony. They just enrolled in school and that was it,” Richt said. “You might have created a date to say you were announcing, but now those guys get to have a day that is truly a signing day that didn’t exist in the past.”