Why the Mizzou staff is focused on committed recruits, not possible de-commitments
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down sports in March, it had a widespread effect on recruiting.
The NCAA instituted a temporary dead period, barring on- and off-campus recruiting, which was extended last week through at least Aug. 31. This means coaches can’t drive or fly to meet recruits, and prospective recruits can’t visit what could be their new home.
None of that has stopped Mizzou, which has gone through a recruiting heat-check in recent weeks. MU coach Eliah Drinkwitz and his Tigers landed six commitments in eight days, shooting up the national rankings.
Those elevated recruiting numbers are the norm nationwide right now, though, as Mizzou recruiting coordinator and tight ends coach Casey Woods pointed out recently. Schools are seeing double or even triple the number of committed recruits they had by June 2019 or June 2018.
Players are locking in their spots at schools before offers are pulled. Those committed recruits will then (hopefully) be able to make unofficial and official campus visits during the fall ahead of the early signing period in December.
All of this has led to some recent speculation: Could there be more de-commitments this year than ever? Mizzou’s coaches said they’re hopeful that players from whom they’ve gotten verbal pledges will stay committed, but they’re also taking measures to ensure they don’t see a surge of de-commitments.
“It depends on the relationships that you have with your young men that are committed to you,” MU running backs coach Curtis Luper said. “We have phenomenal relationships with them.
“In our meeting today, Coach (Drinkwitz) emphasized staying in contact with committed athletes. The athletes that are committed to us are exponentially greater to sign with us because they’re committed to us.”
While the pandemic has surely changed the landscape of recruiting, Woods said the MU staff has derived some positives during these unprecedented times. They’ve been creative in hopes of delivering some excitement, he said, pointing to examples like the “virtual evaluation period” in which Tigers assistants called high schools instead of physically visiting them.
Woods said Mizzou has done a great job of selling its best features, whether that be facilities, playing in the SEC or the new coaching staff headed by Drinkwitz. He also said being able to “host” recruits for virtual visits has led to recruits being more educated than ever about what Missouri and Columbia have to offer.
Usually, Woods said, coaches would spend the bulk of their time traveling to high schools, only to tell potential recruits to come visit them on campus. Now they’re able to sell Mizzou in a way that’s efficient and educational — a way that the coaches and high schoolers alike seem to see as beneficial.
“What we don’t want to do is we don’t want to be set in the ways of we’re going to do the same thing every single time just because that’s what we’ve gotta do,” Woods said. “I think that you have to have a baseline structure. When you have that structure, then you’ve got flexibility to work in and out of that.”
Mizzou has hosted weekly or biweekly video meetings with members of their 2021 recruiting class, which features 16 players and ranks in the top 20 on both 247Sports and Rivals. That effort, Luper said, is intended to show recruits they’re still a top priority for MU.
Luper said that, at some schools, once a recruit commits to a program, the coaches promptly “forget about them.”
“The ones that are committed to us are the most important to us,” Luper said. “They are ours on this particular day. I think there will be some de-commitments if things change, and I think we’ll handle those that are committed to us in a way that they’ll stay committed to us.”
Luper said it remains to be seen whether there will be a rash of de-commitments, as some suspect. But those committed to Mizzou now are the most likely to sign their national letters of intent later, so it makes sense to focus on them and continue to strengthen those bonds.
“We actually have better relationships now with those that are committed to us than we would’ve had had there not been a pandemic,” Luper said. “We have a lot more interactions than we would have. But that’s our way of handling the athletes that are committed to us.”