The Hurry-Up: Recruiting Unknowns Abound Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Including Possible Early Signing Period Cancellation, Recruiting Calendar Changes, Adjusted Decision Timelines

By Zack Carpenter on March 12, 2020 at 6:30 pm
Ryan Day
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The Hurry-Up is your nightly dose of updates from the Ohio State football recruiting trail, keeping tabs on the latest from commits and targets from around the country.

We’re living in a completely unprecedented time with speculation and unknowns changing minute-to-minute regarding the coronavirus. What I’m writing right now could end up being obsolete 10 minutes after you get done reading it. Or sooner. That’s how quickly everything is changing.

Michigan and Ohio State made the right call to suspend all official and unofficial recruiting visits through April 20 and call off any off-campus recruiting visits when the evaluation period begins on April 15. That story had barely been on the shelf when the Buckeyes announced the cancellation of the spring game, and literally as I was writing this piece, an Ohio State spokesperson confirmed that spring practice was canceled and then reneged on that confirmation less than five minutes later.

At this point, it won’t be at all surprising if an announcement on the cancellation of the March 25 pro day is made shortly after this is published, or if a re-confirmation of spring practice cancellation is made.

Plenty of recruits’ schedules and decision timelines have been shaken up by these cancellations, and many took to Twitter to voice their emotions. That includes high-priority defensive end Tunmise Adeleye, who was scheduled for an unofficial visit for the Ohio State spring game,  and many other recruits who were set for visits in March and April – either to the spring game or a spring practice – were upset, even though they’re understanding of it. 

Evan Pryor, TreVeyon Henderson, Jaylen Johnson, Jordan Dingle, Jager Burton and Gabe Powers were all players Eleven Warriors had reached out to over the past week to discuss upcoming visits with the Buckeyes, and those are all moot points now. As are the anticipated visits of Emeka Egbuka and Jakailin Johnson and several others, including Rocco Spindler, who had planned on making an official visit to Columbus on May 1, but it’s obviously up in the air whether that’s in the cards now. Spindler had wanted to make Ohio State his last official visit, giving the Buckeyes a unique opportunity to make the final impression before a mid-May commitment, but that opportunity is certainly out the window now.

Pryor told us the cancellations and decisions on spring ball from Ohio State will affect his decision timeline, and he’s certainly just one example of dozens and dozens of players who will now have to delay their decisions. Or, perhaps in some cases, it speeds up the process, like in the case of Will Shipley, but that’s probably a rare case if it does happen. 

As of right now, I can confidently say that Ohio State has taken the correct precautions regarding its recruiting strategies. Ohio State was one of the first programs to take action, and their actions have been followed on Thursday by Notre Dame, the SEC, Pac 12 and ACC taking similar measures, LSU canceling its Junior Day this weekend, and a number of huge camps being canceled or postponed, and plenty more will certainly follow in the next day or two.

That includes the Elite 11, Top 5 OL Academy and Dick’s Sporting Goods Combine as Brian Stumpf, the president of those camps, announced on Twitter that those March events would be canceled, as part of a long statement saying, “We can not in good conscience bring together hundreds of kids from hundreds of different cities/school districts in a setting with shared equipment, exchanging high-fives, handshakes, bodies coming together and/or in close contact at this time and still believe we are doing what’s best for the kids and their future well-being.”

Other affected events are The Opening Regionals in Orlando (March 14), Miami (March 15) and Indianapolis (March 21), an event that many Ohio State recruits were expecting to participate in, in addition to the Rivals camps series nationwide, including regional sites in Columbus and Indianapolis. The Opening events were initially “canceled” before that was changed to “suspended.”

At the rate things are happening right now, it’s hard to imagine those camps being picked up again in April, but, again, things are changing so rapidly that it’s hard to know.

What’s also hard to know is whether or not the NCAA will take action and put together an emergency schedule change that will push back the recruiting calendar. It seems prudent for the NCAA to step in and hand down a ruling that will cancel all official and unofficial visits nationwide for the current quiet period, in an attempt to ensure certain programs don’t want to give teams unfair advantages over others.

Even though almost every program and conference will be taking these actions, it feels like that sort of ruling from the NCAA is around the corner, and it’s quite possible the NCAA decides to flip the June 22-July 24 dead period into a March-April dead period and turn that June-July time frame into a new quiet period. That’s just one example, but it certainly makes sense to believe we’re trending toward a recruiting schedule change by the NCAA.

Also… 

When Ryan Day talked during February’s National Signing Day, he discussed his dislike of December’s early signing period and how much “pressure” it puts on coaching staffs and the changes it has created. 

As of right now, on March 12, 2020, we’re looking at a possible scenario in which the early signing period gets outright canceled, which is something I had been thinking about all morning and 247Sports’ Steve Wiltfong heard from a college coach “good job getting them on campus if you have already, that was probably pretty crucial.”

(The timing of Donovan Edwards’ visit was big, and we already knew that. Looking back, the timing can retroactively be described as gigantic.)

At the very least, we could be looking at a scenario in which the February National Signing Day becomes what it used to be, with a plethora of the top-rated players making their college commitments closer to that day.

There are just so many unknowns that are really scary right now. The recruiting unknowns are on a much, much lower bar than those, but they still remain a mystery for the time being.

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