By Keenan Cummings
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. —
You can now safely exhale.
Well, that is if you were holding your breath for the possibility of recruiting camps or visits at any point this summer after the NCAA has extended the dead period to the end of July.
August was already set to be a dead period in the original recruiting calendar, which means without any type of adjustments the first time a prospect will be back in Morgantown would be Sept. 12 for the home opener against Eastern Kentucky.
The period prevents any in-person contact between coaches and players, which means visits can’t happen during these mandated lulls. This period has been in effect since mid-March and now has eliminated basically all of the traditional staples of the spring and summer.
Spring visits, the evaluation period, early official visit opportunities and now all of summer prospect camp season are wiped off the board in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With those data points erased, college coaches everywhere have been forced to adjust their own strategies when it comes to building their respective recruiting class. There are no chances for live evaluations or opportunities to bring players to campus to get to know them better.
Conveniently, in the case of West Virginia, the coaches worked ahead this cycle and were very active bringing prospects to campus throughout the year and over the course of six different junior days spread out between December to March. That has proven critical when it comes to the construction of the current class with all 11 commitments plenty familiar with the coaches and Morgantown.
But as more time ticks away and more and more players making earlier decisions, it begs an interesting question: How will the Mountaineers adapt to these uncertain times?
WVU could clearly keep its current approach but it’s going to eliminate chances to secure some commitments of players that have yet to visit. Or it could look at modifying things and adding to an already impressive class in lieu of summer visit schedule being canceled.
The Mountaineers are currently well-ahead of the pace of any other year since Rivals.com started tracking commitments in 2002, but as a whole college football is in the same boat. Roughly more than 300 prospects committed to schools over this same period last year and that number is likely going to increase with any hope of visits until at least the fall now removed.
This makes the importance of virtual visits and contact with recruits more important than ever, but how things unfold in the coming weeks will be interesting for the direction of the 2021 class.
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