College Football Recruiting
Putting Together A Recruiting Class
By Chris Dokish

What is the most common way to evaluate a player?

Greg Gattuso, Pitt: Game film is crucial. Combines whet your appetite for a player because you get to see them run and jump then you take it from there. If you can see a kid play live, that's good, but you don't get to see that often. Most evaluations are done by tape.

Bruce Chambers, Texas: Both live evaluation and film have their plusses. Let's say you're looking at a running back and he scores a touchdown - or he fumbles, for that matter. When you're there live, you can observe him on the sidelines and see how he interacts with his teammates and with his coaches. You don't get to see that on tape. If we see a kid on tape and he's a good player, we always try to get there to see him live just because you can see some of the intangibles that you can't see on tape.

Joe Whitt, Lousiville: We do a lot of evaluating on tape because it's the easiest way to evaluate a great number of players. With all the requests we receive, our coaches sit down and look over hours and hours of tapes.

How soon in their high school careers do you start to evaluate players and how do you find them?

Pitt's Gattuso: Word of mouth. Coaches tip us off. Usually when we are checking out seniors, the coach will tell you about future prospects. You can see a kid on film when looking at another player. You have combines and of course the recruiting services - people like you. We get an idea of who the top juniors and sophomores are, and in rare cases a freshman, from tips.

Curt Cignetti, NC State: In terms of monitoring, we do that as early as ninth grade. Per NCAA rules we can't recruit and can't mail a prospect until September 1 of his junior year. Once September of his senior year rolls around we can call once a week. A prospect can make unofficial visits throughout their junior and senior years.

The usual order that we find players is: No. 1, the May evaluation period; No. 2, the recruiting services; No. 3, the coaching mail-outs to high schools; No. 4, by word of mouth; and No. 5, through internet recruiting services.

So exactly what role do the internet recruiting services play?

Gattuso: They are a good thing and a bad thing. They give us an idea of who to offer but, really, anyone can get a website and call themselves a recruiting expert. Some are good and some are bad. You have to weed through the info and see what is useful and what isn't. But these kids get bombarded with calls very early and it takes a very mature kid to be able to handle it. It's crazy.

NC State's Cignetti: We use the internet services to identify prospects and to track the recruiting process for individual prospects.

Do you have a "big board" at the beginning of the year and then recruit the kids on that list accordingly?

Gattuso: Yeah, there is a base board and you decide who you want to offer. But as it goes on it becomes very fluid.

Cignetti: We do have a large master list of 2,000-3,000 come February of a prospect's junior year, and that is narrowed down to 500 in May. We then refine it as we go through the process.

How important do you think it is to be the first program to offer a kid?

Gattuso: I don't think it's that important. It's more important that you get the right kind of kid. Some schools just offer the top 100 players in the country. They offer kids they haven't even met. But Coach Wannstedt wants to meet a kid and look into his eyes. He is a wonderful judge of talent.

Herb Hand, West Virginia: It is important to be thorough in your evaluation and not jump the gun just to be the first to offer. That is why we try to do our best to cultivate our specific recruiting areas so we know who all of the younger players in the area are. We will early offer kids that we feel are a good match for our needs and our program. We will not early offer kids just to be the first to offer.

How do you handle the recruitment of certain geographical areas?

WVU's Hand: We try to keep our coaches in a specific geography so they can develop relationships with the high school coaches in that area...by continually changing the recruiting coach, you are not able to develop those relationships.

Texas' Chambers: Texas is so big and there are so many kids here. Basically, we cut the state up amongst our coaches, but we also team-recruit. So if I'm recruiting Houston and there's an offensive lineman we want, since I'm not the offensive line coach, we bring the offensive line coach in. Recruiting is trust, and we need to establish that from the get-go.

But because Texas is so big and you can only take 25 kids in a given year, that means there are another 350 to 375 kids out there in-state to go around. Rarely do we go outside the state, but if there's a kid who is interested in us, and if there's a Texas tie, then we'll recruit him. But he's got to be interested in us first.

Is there such a thing as a "silent verbal"?

Gattuso: No, I don't really see the point in such a thing. It's the same as a "soft verbal." It doesn't stop other schools from coming after the player so it doesn't make any sense to me.

Chambers: I don't know. I suppose such a thing exists. The way we look at it is, if a kid wants to come to Texas, then he wants to come to Texas and he doesn't care who knows it.

What do you think of the current practice of sending multiple handwritten letters a day to a prospect? People want to know what you guys could possibly be writing.

Gattuso: (Laughs) It shows how interested you are in the kid. It's flattering for them. But our coaches put thought in it. A kid can tell when a coach just jots something down.

What is a "grayshirt"?

Gattuso: He is a player that enters school in the second semester and delays his participation on the team. He can't participate with the team until the second semester when he is under scholarship.

Does he pay his own way for the first semester?

Gattuso: Yes, but he can not have a full class schedule. (Note: He actually doesn't need to take any classes at all).

It is commonly believed that a grayshirt will be counted against the incoming recruiting class, but he can also be counted against the previous recruiting class, correct?

Yes, if there is an opening in your previous class, you can count him against that one.

Chris Dokish is the Recruiting Editor for the Pittsburgh Sports Report and the lead writer for Keystone Recruiting.

Thanks to:
Bruce Chambers, University of Texas
Curt Cignetti, North Carolina State University
Greg Gattuso, University of Pittsburgh
Herb Hand, West Virginia University
Joe Whitt, University of Louisville