Why Georgia’s top football prospects are committing earlier than ever

Howard High’s Ta’Shawn Poole was the last Georgia blue chip standing.

Poole, the No. 4 senior football prospect in the state of Georgia this fall, is set to make his college commitment Thursday. He’s down to Florida State, Georgia, and Tennessee, but the real question here isn’t where he is going.

It was what took him so long compared with his peers. He’s one of only four players among the state’s 40 highest-rated recruits who had not yet made their college commitment.

The nation’s No. 5 safety and the No. 64 overall recruit was the only one of the state’s top 10 prospects on the 247Sports Composite that had not made his college commitment.

That’s not a blip, but the latest example where college football recruiting feels more like speed dating. It used to be that the state’s high school coaches would tell elite prospects they wanted to see them committed before the start of their senior seasons. That was their preference.

To reduce that distraction. To focus on chasing a ring with their team during their senior year, without having to take official visits in the middle of region play.

That suggestion was rarely followed until two or three years ago. That’s when the state saw its top prospects take all their official visits in the spring and commit in June and July. Nobody takes official visits in the fall anymore.

Why did that happen? Easy: Because that was what their future college homes wanted them to do.

The top three prospects in Georgia this year were all committed by April 15. The state’s most talented players had largely all made their commitments by Father’s Day, after they had already taken their first or second official visits.

This isn’t a regional thing. There have already been 45 commitments made from the top 50 prospects in Florida. The latest rankings reflect that 86 of the nation’s top 100 players have all made their commitments before the end of June.

What’s happening here?

“I think it goes back to simple supply and demand principles,” Milton head coach Ben Reaves said. “Less supply, offers at the schools of your choosing, so more of an incentive to hop on it earlier and secure that spot before someone else takes it.”

The feelings of the Douglas County High School staff cut to the heart of the matter. The Tigers, not only one of the top programs in the state, have been a high-traffic area for college recruiters.

Coach Johnny White’s program has seen seven Tigers ranked among the state’s top 50 prospects over the last two cycles, including four in the current 2027 class.

Committed by mid-June? That’s the new normal.

“They’d better be committed,” White said. “Because they will be getting passed on. It is a different game in recruiting, man. Like 10-15 years ago, we’d always tell kids if you were taking five visits, the school that you want to go to the most, you save that for your last visit.

“You can’t take that chance anymore. By the time these schools have had three or four other weeks of official visits, they have filled up at your position by then.”

That happened to one of his players this year.

“The school he had ranked the highest, he wanted to take that visit as his last visit,” White said. “They called last week and said they have had three other weekends of visits, and they no longer have his position open. Other kids had come in and committed.”

It resembles the same method that college programs use for transfer portal recruits. When those targets made it to campus for the first portal visit, they didn’t let them leave without a commitment. They moved quickly and put down an offer they couldn’t walk away from.

“Exactly,” White said. “That’s the same thing with these high school kids now. My new rule is I’m going to tell kids whoever is highest on your board, that’s who you better go to first. If you put them off for later on, you may no longer have that opportunity there.

“They very well may be full by the time your visit comes.”

The timelines keep moving up. Carrollton 4-star OL Kweli Fielder is currently rated as the No. 10 player in the state for 2018. He just committed to Miami on Wednesday night. CJ Cypher, his high school teammate, is considered by most to be the state’s top QB prospect in 2029.

He also committed to Miami on Wednesday.