Five-star linebacker Smael Mondon was strongly attracted to the University of Oklahoma earlier last year. He had good relationships with inside linebackers coach Brian Odom and head coach Lincoln Riley, he said. He planned his first trip to campus toward the end of March.
Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The NCAA paused in-person visits for Division I sports on March 13. Mondon, then a rising senior at Paulding County High School, never visited Oklahoma. The NCAA restrictions on recruiting will be in effect until at least April 15, making it tough on another season as coaches aren’t permitted to meet face-to-face with a recruit off campus or do any in-person scouting.
“It’s kind of too far for me to just say, ‘Oh, let me still try to go there anyway,’ ” Mondon said of Oklahoma. “So that’s one school the pandemic really messed up my plans of [visiting].”
When he tweeted his top five schools in October, the Sooners weren’t on the list. Instead, he had narrowed it to five Southeastern Conference teams: LSU, Auburn, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.
“Just not having an in-person visit, I can’t really go out on a limb and go there still,” said Mondon, who committed to Georgia on Nov. 18.
The recruiting restrictions do not explicitly forbid on-campus visits, but they encourage coaches to stop them. As always, the NCAA does permit communication between coaches and recruits over email, phone, text and social media.
“For years and years and years, colleges spent a ton of money on their facilities, all the bells and whistles,” said Mondon’s high school coach, Van Spence. “Well now, the most important thing is the person recruiting better be a great communicator and be legitimate.”
A focus on communication could be advantageous for smaller football programs such as Kennesaw State and Georgia State, but it might not be that simple. Distinctions exist between Division I FBS and other divisions that the pandemic restrictions have made worse.
Division I FCS and Division II schools, for example, don’t pinpoint high-level prospects as early as Division I FBS teams. They focus more on prospects’ junior- and senior-year film.
This year, there’s a lot less fresh tape to evaluate.
Spring practices and summer camps were canceled. The pandemic also wiped out fall high school football in 15 states.
“[Division I FBS schools] are going to be well ahead of us in terms of how many offers they have out and who’s committed to them,” said Liam Klein, Kennesaw State’s recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach.
Kennesaw State coaches would have evaluated prospects at high school spring practices last year from April 15-May 31, Klein said. But that process was derailed.
Jefferson High School head football coach Gene Cathcart has seen the differences firsthand. Five-star athlete Malaki Starks, a junior at Jefferson, already has received offers from several Power Five schools, including Clemson, Georgia and Alabama.
Starks frequently receives calls, Cathcart said. Other football players at Jefferson haven’t heard much from lower-division teams.
“I think the best of the best are still being recruited as if there was no difference, but I think it’s those I-AA type, Division II programs and players that everything seems to be moving at a slower rate with,” Cathcart said.
Jordan Perry, a junior running back and linebacker at Jefferson, is still waiting on offers. With the pandemic restrictions, he missed out on the most important evaluation periods at FCS and Division II and III schools.
“It sucks, definitely, not being able to meet anybody and stuff like that,” Perry said. “Since I’m still a junior, I’ve got another year, maybe this will get a little better. I don’t know, maybe they’ll start letting them do a little more.”
Pivoting to a communication-based approach, Kennesaw State recruiters have spent more time on the phone with high school coaches. They ask for recommendations and film, Klein said.
Credit: Daniel Varnado
Credit: Daniel Varnado
Mark LeGree, Georgia State’s high school relations recruiting coordinator, said he hasn’t spoken to prospects directly since they stopped offering in-person tours. Instead, they split the all-important communication among 11 coaches.
“I remember in meetings, Coach [Shawn Elliott] was always like, ‘Make sure you’re talking to these guys consistently’ because if you take a week break, a couple weeks, or even maybe a couple of days, that could be the difference in you landing the kid,” LeGree said.
Of course, smaller programs, because of their smaller budgets, don’t have the staffing that their Division I FBS counterparts do. That limits how frequently they can reach out to prospects.
Power Five programs often have separate staff positions dedicated to recruiting. Georgia lists six staff members with titles directly related to football recruiting.
Georgia State, which joined the Division I FBS Sun Belt conference from the FCS level in 2013, has 11 staff members — all coaches — dedicated to recruiting.
“We’re not like a big Power Five conference, we don’t have as many pieces,” LeGree said. “I’m just an assistant, so I don’t talk to kids directly. I did whenever we brought them on campus, when I was one of the main ones giving them tours.”
Starting Sept. 1 of a prospect’s junior year, athletes can receive any form of private communication from college recruiters, per the NCAA. The NCAA does not set a limit on phone calls from college coaches to players starting Sept. 1 of their senior year during the contact period.
Some high school coaches warn their players to be cautious with virtual communication. Bainbridge High School head football coach Jeff Littleton, who coaches five-star junior athlete Deyon Bouie, emphasizes the importance of face-to-face interactions.
“With face-to-face, you can see emotions and you can see those types of things, whereas through a text, sometimes you miscommunicate,” Littleton said.
Like many other schools across the country, Georgia State pivoted to virtual tours due to the pandemic. Positive branding and social media prominence have also become more pivotal to the recruiting process this year. Colleges often edit videos, create graphics and take photos for prospects when they visit, commit or sign.
Virtual tours and social media messaging are other areas in which the smaller staffs at smaller programs are struggling to keep up with Division I FBS teams, who have employees whose only job is to create this content. At Kennesaw State, coaches, interns and graduate assistants all contribute, Klein said.
“We all have to dabble in different things,” Klein said, “to make sure we’re selling our product the right way and in the way that it needs to be done.”
Shorter University in Rome, as a Division II school, has been able to host prospects on campus. Not every family or prospect is comfortable with this option, however, said quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator Blake Robles. Building the relationship through communication is still key.
“It works out alright, keeping in touch with them on Twitter and stuff,” Robles said. “Just maintaining and knowing who’s playing games, when they are, to follow up and know who their opponent is. … We tried to keep it as close as what we would normally do.”
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
The recruitment process didn’t change much for Mondon in the early days of the pandemic. But once the reality of COVID-19′s longevity set in, the FBS coaches he’d been speaking to for years began to call him more often.
Sometimes he received calls from a coach every day. The conversations with coaches were often about more than football, he said. They would discuss “everything,” including how his life was going outside of football.
Keeping the relationship strong throughout the pandemic meant the most to him during his decision process, Mondon said.
“It’s really consistency,” he said. “Showing that I’m wanted there, because I’m not really trying to go anywhere where I’m not wanted.”
The Grady Sports Bureau is part of the sports media program at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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