Arizona Football: Recruiting, Committing and Coaching before signing day

It appears more and more with Arizona football that committed athletes are de-committing, but it goes both ways.

There is more uncertainty today than ever before due to early commitments and colleges offering already committed athletes. Along with many other factors, selecting athletes and schools has become an intricate and sometimes confusing prospect.

NCAA football recruits are looking at their future, not only in college but their future in the NFL. Recruits also evaluate how much playing time they will get with their future college team. On the coaches side, they are filling roster needs in an ever-changing landscape.

Until a recruit actually signs the paper, it seems all is fair in love and war. National Letter of Intent (NLI) signing days starts February 3 through April 1, 2016.

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Recruiting for Arizona is not an easy task, although some fans think it’s a slam dunk. The new facilities are great, it’s a wonderful school and campus, but it is not an educational powerhouse like Stanford, UCLA, Cal or USC. Also, Arizona cannot boast when it comes to the number players recently picked in the NFL Draft.

For the University of Arizona, there were nine listed Wildcats entering the NFL 2015 draft, but none of them were selected. A few were signed later as undrafted free agents after the draft but were eventually dropped, much to our dismay.

NCAA teams with the most 2015 NFL Draft picks (Pac-12 – bold):

• 10  – Louisville
• 8    – Florida
• 7    – Alabama
• 6    – Miami, Oklahoma, Stanford, USC
• 5    – Clemson, Georgia, Mississippi State, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas
• 4    – Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon State, Utah, Washington, West Virginia
• 3 and less – all other schools including UCLA with three

The most recent Wildcats working in the NFL are Bengals LB Marquis Flowers, who is recovering from surgery, the Bears RB Ka’deem Carey, Rams QB Nick Foles and recently the Titans signed CB Shaquille Richardson to their practice squad in November.

The tide will hopefully turn with Scooby Wright III and Cayleb Jones entering the 2016 NFL draft this year. Worst case, Rich Rod can still talk about New England Patriots TE Rob Gronkowski, who has shown his Wildcats pride lately.

Most college football players won’t be playing in the NFL; they are just looking for a free but solid and rewarding college football experience. There is a lot of pressure on these teens; they have their families and several sets of coaches telling them what they should do.

Cutting down their lists or committing to a school early, young recruits limit the amount of input so they can concentrate on school and football. Sometimes recruits commit because they get excited with an offer and think they won’t get any better offers.

They also de-commit after they focused and had a stellar senior year, often offered by great schools after they have already committed. But that isn’t the only reason an athlete will de-commit.

The movement in recruiting is not just on the recruits side of the house; the coaches decisions have a lot to do with whether a player feels the team is thinking of the recruits best interests.

On the coaches side of the house, they have roster spots to fill, positions to strengthen and scholarships to manage. So de-commitments are also a result of coaches requests. Coaches, when evaluating their rosters, find they don’t have enough scholarships to offer a player they may all of the sudden retreat a bit from a commit discouraging him.

This process resembles a juggling act of sorts. Roster needs change over time as the number of players commit by position at any given time. Let’s say all five running back recruits offered commit to Arizona, and the coaches just wanted three. They may ask two of the commits to wait to play. It could also go the other way; not enough running backs commit, so the team has to offer more running backs and maybe there are no scholarships left.

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To make room on the roster, or to make sure the athlete has the best chance to be successful, coaches will ask the freshman to accept ‘red-shirt,’ ‘gray-shirt’ or even a harder to accept ‘blue-shirt’ distinction. This is another reason a committed player may change his mind and re-open his recruitment. Recruits will also look at the depth of their position on the team and if they want play time immediately.

Red-shirt freshman, come to school in the fall, go to classes, practice with the team but don’t suit up and play, they skip the year. A lot of the time this is done to allow the player to bulk up and get used to the speed and rigors of college football.

Kendal Franklin, for example, was consulted, and he made the decision to red-shirt. This was before all of the defensive teams injuries. When you think about it, why not wait a year, bulk up but still learn through being a part of the team training activities, and have one more year in college? Franklin was asked to suit up a few times this season just in case they needed him to replaced more injured players, but thankfully he stayed on the sidelines and preserved his red-shirt status.

There is also a red-shirt medical distinction that would be for a player who gets hurt before the season starts. Trevor Wood (TE), for example, was injured before the season start so he may have fallen into this category.

Then there are gray-shirt freshmen. Gray-shirt freshmen are asked to enroll in school beginning in the winter or spring semester.  They don’t play or practice with the team until spring, and then they join the team and are included in spring football.

An example of a gray-shirt freshman is Jamie Nunley (TE) who took the fall semester to bulk up. He will be arriving in Tucson this week and is very excited.

Related Story: Incoming Tight End Jamie Nunley is More Than Ready to Come to Tucson

Gray-shirt freshman can also be a player who got injured in the summer before he attends classes and will also come to Tucson in the spring after he recovers.

A good example of a medical related gray-shirt freshman would be Antonio Parks (CB) from Louisiana. Parks was injured in the summer and spent the fall semester recovering and chomping at the bit to get to Tucson. Parks has arrived in Tucson for the spring semester this week.

Related Story: Arizona Football: Commit Antonio Parks Arriving in the Spring

Commits who want to come in and play in the fall will de-commit if gray-shirting doesn’t sit well with them.

That brings us to ‘blue-shirt’ freshman who are asked by the coaches to start school as a “preferred” or “recruited” walk-on, then they go on to earn a football scholarship. When a commit is asked by coaches to come in as a ‘blue-shirt,’ they may take offense to that and re-open their recruiting.

Coaches may suggest ‘blue-shirting’ if they find they have too many commits at the same position. So it really goes both ways. Rodriguez and staff seem to be really really good at offering two and three-star underestimated recruits early. After the recruit or commit performs stellar in their senior years, more doors begin opening up.

This might have been the reason Devon Modster de-committed from Arizona last month. Another reason Modster may have de-committed is that Arizona would have had at least four potential starting quarterbacks. Also, incoming freshman QB Khalil Tate graduated high school early to enroll in classes at the U of A for the spring semester, way before the fall or the summer when the rest of the freshmen arrive. Seen below with incoming freshman CB Isaiah Hayes, they are all moved into their dorms.

They will sign their National Letters of Intent during the upcoming official signing period.

Even before a recruit is ready to receive offers, their parents are planning out their future.

A parent of a prominent incoming Wildcat freshman advised ZZ that some parents are now holding back their second and third graders for some years. The reason they hold their young sons back and have them repeat grades is to try and give them a fair chance of attending a major college. Also, they want their children to be more prepared to enter the NFL draft early on in their college career.

It’s hard to support this idea as a parent, you kind of feel sorry for the children. Their whole lives are mapped out before they hit the fourth grade. That said, if these children are great football players, they will be more than ready size and maturity-wise to play at the collegiate level.

With all the children being held back, all the red, gray, and blue-shirting, and NFL considerations, it is not uncommon to find teams with 25-year-olds playing in their red-shirt senior years. If that’s the case, then more and more young freshman will need to red-shirt and build up their skills and bodies to compete for playing time.

There is at least one more major reason a commit might de-commit: coaching changes. Arizona’s head coach Rich Rodriguez just released his defensive coaching staff including Coach Casteel. Recruits and commits were getting close to Coach Casteel and his staff who are no longer with the program. On top of that, new coaches have not yet been hired, so this will cause some recruits to look again at Arizona and commits to think again about other offers or new offers.

More wildcats: Arizona Wildcats: Top 30 athletes in school history

It will be a crazy couple of months, so fasten your seatbelts!

BearDown Arizona!