Cloak and dagger recruiting tales

It's impossible to really understand life as a college football coach on the recruiting trail. It's never simply a matter of contacting recruits and selling them on your school and program.

It's really a low-grade game of cloak-and-dagger, and the stories coaches tell (years after, when the top secret status has been downgraded by time and graduation) would make you wonder about the sanity of it all.

Consider the recruitment of John Jefferson, a story that has taken on a life of its own. Frank Kush once told a story about hiding Jefferson from late comers, and it has become bigger than life as it's been retold from booster to booster.

If you believe the latest versions, Kush sent staffers to Jefferson's Dallas home, moved him to a hotel, and hid out until he signed his Letter of Intent on the first day he could (a day which we've come to know as the magical First Wednesday in February, and which will someday be recognized as a national holiday).

Then there's the story of O.J. Simpson. ASU had him at the airport and had all but locked up the future superstar and, sadly, future social pariah. But back then, O.J. was just a blue-chip JC running back recruit in a full-scale tug of war between ASU and USC. As the story goes, an ASU assistant let O.J. go to the airport restroom where he was met by a USC recruiter who talked him into returning home on the sly. Of course, O.J. went on to star at USC and later in the NFL, with Buffalo as one of the all-time greatest running backs.

Then there are the stories that seem of tantamount of importance at the time, but never really fit the test of time. For example, receivers coach Karl Dorrell left ASU for a similar job at Colorado. Dorrell was perhaps the key in-state recruiter for ASU, and was recruiting All-American receiver Kenny Mitchell. For a moment, Dorrell had turned Mitchell's head towards Colorado, but ASU reversed him at the last moment to get him to sign with ASU. It seemed like a huge recruiting coup at the time, but Mitchell waited nearly 4 years before displaying All-American skills, while less heralded recruit Lenzie Jackson became Jake Plummer's workhorse receiver during that era.

There weren't many stories of this caliber under the Koetter era of ASU football because Koetter's staff took a very above-board approach to recruiting. They waited to evaluate recruits' senior seasons and more or less played in the pool of recruits that had yet to commit. They did not have a hard-sell agenda, and that appealed to some recruits, but probably resulted in a less-than-desirable annual yield.

We should probably expect more of these types of stories under Dennis Erickson's staff. There seems to be a pirate flag flying over Tempe these days, and the staff appears willing to pump recruits hard -- committed or otherwise -- until the NCAA rings the bell on the season's recruiting. While nobody wants other coaching staffs to raid their own stockpile of commitments, it does seem to be a reality that to produce big-time results, you have to play by the standards of your opponents. That means taking whatever you can get, even if it means pilfering from another program's stash.

In the meantime, it's probably not a bad idea to have a few cloak-and-dagger tricks and a hotel room or two to protect your own.

Best quote you'll read all year

Today's Republic includes a well-written article by Jeff Metcalfe regarding Dennis Erickson's early success in recruiting, despite the lack of big name commitments to this year's class.

The article includes this quote from Allen Wallace. It's something we should all learn by heart:

One of the most fundamental wrong focuses of a coach's first year is who he brings in. It's the least important thing. Fans want everything, to fix the future and the immediate. The new coach is supposed to do in two-three months what everybody else hasn't done in a year. It's not going to happen that way.

It sounds like DE and his staff are a lot more focused on building the foundation for future classes, versus this year's haul.

Having said that, Metcalfe also reports that ASU received two more commitments yesterday, including one from Jonathan English from Louisiana.

What to Expect When You're Expecting

Twenty years ago, the best day of the year for the geek football fan was NFL draft day. Back then, it was still only an event that the hardcore fan set aside on their calendar.

Now that the NFL draft is mainstream, the new "best day of the year" for overly obsessive fans is National Letter of Intent day, also known as LOI day, which is usually the first Wednesday of February.

If you have already scheduled to take the day off work, or are planning to work from home in order to be able to hit the Refresh button on your PC 100 times per hour all day, then your priorities are probably out of whack. However, let's face it, it's fun. Just like Christmas, and just like draft day, on LOI day everyone is a winner.

Since some of you will be about to experience your first internet LOI day, here are a few things you should and should not expect:

- DO expect an official announcement at around 5p.m. AZ time -- usually no word from ASU until an official press release gets posted to the Sun Devils website in the late afternoon. Often you will get confirmation of a few signings prior to the official release from one of the recruiting sites.
- DO expect one or two names to be missing, but don't painc -- each year one or two LOIs arrive too late for inclusion in the initial release, so if the name of one commitment is missing, don't be too worried (unless he shows up on another school's LOI list!!!)
- Do NOT expect many surprises -- every year we hope for a couple of unexpected names to appear on the list. Never happens. If you follow the major recruiting sites, then by Monday or Tuesday you'll have a pretty solid idea of who will sign.
- DO expect a major outpouring of grief on the message boards. Topics you can be sure to read about will be: "See, this proves that Dennis Erickson is useless". "See, this proves that Dirk Koetter should never have been fired", "See, this proves that Ron English should have been hired", "ASU will never win another game", "I will not renew my season tickets", "Does [Insert Name Here] know how cold it is in [Insert State Here] in the winter?", "au has beaten us again in the rankings", etc. Seasoned posters know to stay well clear of the message boards for at least 48 hours following LOI day.
- Do NOT expect anyone to rationally point out that this year's class is, for the most part, an irrelevance in the big picture. DE's success at ASU will be defined by his 2008 and (even more) his 2009 classes. Hopefully he is laying the foundation for those classes right now.
- DO expect great things from the kids that sign. This will be a special class, probably comprising more overachiever types than usual. Welcome them all with open arms; after all, they have chosen to be SUN DEVILS. Who knows, they may be the first class to win two Rose Bowls in the maroon-and-gold.