HIGH SCHOOLS

who is still waiting for a chance that he hopes might still come.

“It’s really frustrating,” O’Keeffe said. “I think about it a lot. But I’m hoping after the end of the season maybe coaches might be able to come to the schools or at least get in contact with us a little bit more.”

Miami-Dade and Broward counties for decades have been a hotbed of football talent.

For every major Power 5 signee there are numerous others that don’t land an FBS-level scholarship offer until late in the process and sometimes go on to have great college and pro careers.

That process begins long before actual football games are played.

But this year there was no spring football.

Few 7-on-7 tournaments were held statewide and many coaches and parents were concerned about their players’ safely attending such events during the early months of the pandemic.

“It’s a fine line between college exposure and safety,” Columbus coach Dave Dunn said. “I didn’t think the timing was right for our guys.”

Colleges were also unable to hold on-campus camps, which offer 7-on-7s, as well as instructional workouts and opportunities for recruiters to evaluate offensive and defensive linemen.

And because of the pandemic and an ongoing dead period by the NCAA, college recruiters are not able to attend games or practices to evaluate athletes in person.

Without these resources, college coaches have had to rely heavily on game film and information provided by schools leaning on relationships built over the years

“A lot of these kids haven’t been seen personally [by recruiters] in about a year,” said longtime high school football recruiting analyst Larry Blustein. “The kid you wished was 5-11,

210 pounds? Hey, guess what? Now he’s 5-11, 210.

“Those are the kids that are getting hurt by this the most. They can’t be seen live and can only get so much film. It’s as bad a

scenario as you can think of for recruiting.”

Several South Florida private and charter schools started playing their football seasons in late August or in September. The public schools in Miami-Dade and Broward that opted out of the state series began in mid-late October and hope to at least play a five-game regular season with a postseason to compete for an area championship.

High school coaches have since been scrambling to collect and send as much updated game film as possible to recruiters.

But watching a player’s performances on a computer screen doesn’t tell nearly the complete picture that recruiters rely on to make tough decisions on who to offer scholarships.

“Evaluations aren’t just watching film and watching games,” said Charles Fishbein, the director of Elite Scouting Services. “These coaches like to come down and see how they practice and how they interact with their teammates. Are they coachable on and off the field? When they practice does a kid listen to his coach or is he fighting with him? They wouldn’t recruit these kids if they weren’t talented. That’s a given. It’s the outside evaluations. It’s talking to their coaches, their teachers, people in the community.

“A lot of that gets lost when you don’t have the chance to come down and watch spring or fall practices or games.”

Defending Class 8A state champion Columbus even held a private combine on campus just before practices began in order to gather as much updated information as possible on their players to send to colleges. Dunn has multiple players, such as running back Vershod Quinn, wide receiver Chris Gibert and middle linebacker Joseph Price who he believes could be worthy of an FBS offer.

“I don’t understand the NCAA not allowing people on campus at least in a safe way where either I or one of our players can meet with a coach outside and do it socially distanced,” said Dunn, a former recruiting coordinator at Marshall. “Any time something is done prohibiting the exposure for our young men to have a chance to further their careers at a top institution, we should try to remove as many roadblocks as we can.”

American Heritage coach Patrick Surtain has players

committed to FBS schools on his roster, but hopes a recent nationally televised game against fellow powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas provided some vital exposure to his under-the-radar players like 5-8, 160-pound senior wide receiver Vinson Davis, who is playing quarterback this season.

Davis has offers from schools like Arizona State, Baylor and Coastal Carolina, but Surtain believes he could be drawing more had he been able to participate in a typical offseason.

“It’s tough because with football it’s a year-round process,” Surtain said. “We had some fringe guys who with a great spring would have opened some eyes.”

Another issue is the potential backlog of recruits heading into the 2021 season.

The NCAA granted the option of an extra year of eligibility to all fall sports athletes before the college season began. FBS schools are currently allowed a total of 85 scholarships and 25 per recruiting class.

With a large number of players potentially opting to return for the 2021 season, and schools already holding numerous prior commitments, it has affected how many scholarships schools are willing to offer because many schools might run out of spots on a future roster.

“A lot of schools are going to think should we take a flyer on a high school kid we haven’t seen or a kid that’s got one year left?” Fishbein said. “Schools could lean toward keeping the kid that’s already played in college and knows the physical and mental challenges of playing at that level.”

Budgets have also been cut due to the pandemic, limiting some school’s resources as well.

The early signing period is still set to begin in December, but the uncertainty could push many decisions to the later signing period in February. Some states such as California aren’t even playing football until next spring, which could further complicate matters.

“Recruiting is almost at a standstill right now,” Cardinal Gibbons coach Matt DuBuc said. “Colleges don’t know who is going to opt in for another year and now their budgets are slashed so they’re scared to commit to those middle-of-the-road kids.

“It’s really a shame what’s happening to this group of kids across the country with this whole thing.”