College football recruiting has been anything but normal for the 2022 class because of restrictions from COVID-19. A recruiting dead period that prevented any recruits from visiting campus had been in place since March of last year.
That dead period was lifted on Tuesday. Recruits will once again be allowed to visit schools from June 1 to June 27. Generally, schools have gotten off to a slower start than they would have liked.
But recruiting will pick up heavily during this time, and once prospects have gotten a feel for the coaches and campus in person, there could be a flurry of commitments shortly thereafter. While some programs will struggle this cycle, here are a few schools that shouldn’t panic and could see a boost to their recruiting classes coming soon.
As of now, Alabama is ranked No. 12 in the class rankings, which is low for its standards. It’s not unfamiliar territory, however, as Alabama was ranked No. 23 overall at this time last year.
The staff had only five commitments in the 2021 class on May 22, but skyrocketed up the rankings shortly after. Alabama added 10 commitments from May 22 to July 23 and moved all the way up to No. 2 in the rankings.
The Crimson Tide jockeyed back and forth with Ohio State before closing the cycle out at No. 1 overall.
Alabama currently has six commitments in the 2022 class, five ranked in the ESPN 300. The class is led by the No. 1-ranked running back, Emmanuel Henderson, and the No. 1 dual-threat quarterback, Ty Simpson.
As usual, the Crimson Tide are in on some of the biggest names in this class that have yet to make a decision. That includes five-stars defensive end Jeremiah Alexander, offensive tackle Tyler Booker, linebacker Harold Perkins, defensive end Shemar Stewart and four-star offensive tackle Zach Rice.
Rice, Stewart, Alexander and Booker will visit Alabama in June.
The Tigers have only four total commitments, but all four are ranked in the ESPN 300. The class has two offensive tackles in Collin Sadler and Blake Miller, wide receiver Adam Randall and dual-threat quarterback Cade Klubnik.
The four puts Clemson behind 11 other teams in ESPN 300 commitments so far in this cycle.
Similar to Alabama, though, it’s not a concern for Clemson to start slow. The staff tends to stick to its own process, evaluating prospects and extending offers only to those it really covets rather than casting a wide net.
Getting recruits on campus will be as much for the recruits as it will be for the Clemson staff. Similarly to Alabama, there are plenty of top recruits still considering the Tigers that have yet to make a decision, namely cornerback Jeadyn Lukus, Stewart, defensive end Enai White, defensive tackle Alex VanSumeren and linebacker Shawn Murphy, among others.
The Gators have steadily risen in the recruiting rankings the past few years after finishing at No. 13 in 2018, moving up to No. 9 in 2019, No. 8 in 2020 and finishing the 2021 cycle at No. 5.
In the 2022 cycle, Florida currently is ranked No. 20 with six total commitments, three ranked in the ESPN 300. That puts Florida behind 12 other programs, and it is behind where Florida was at this time last year.
In the 2021 class, the Gators were ranked No. 5 on May 22, with 14 total commitments. This class is much different, though, and it can’t really be compared to the last because of the restrictions.
Florida isn’t going to stay in this position long and should be able to take advantage of June. With some of the top targets still on the board, including five-stars defensive tackle Walter Nolen, Booker and wide receiver Evan Stewart, there is still a ton left for Florida to add.
June visits will impact the recruiting calendar
With official visits starting Tuesday, one Power 5 personnel director compared this first weekend of visits to the day Disneyland opened, as so many prospects are going to take advantage of this month.
In a typical year, recruits are able to take official visits in the spring and in the fall, but the created dead period prevented any visits. These 2022 prospects have not been able to take any visits since February 2020.
“I brought it up to our coaches, it’s kind of like we’re putting all our chips in right now in the month of June, because a lot of these guys may never get back before December signing period,” Ohio State personnel director Mark Pantoni said. “So, that’s a long time to go, and that impression may lose a lot of its luster and a lot of the top guys we’re going after right now, these next four weeks, they’re going to be taking visits every weekend.”
Because so many recruits will end up taking official visits in June, some coaches believe there will be fewer official visits taken during the season than normal.
With that in mind, coaches are preparing, as Pantoni said, since June is the big opportunity to make an impression and hopefully secure a commitment.
That poses as a problem for a school if it doesn’t have the visit it was hoping for, if it’s the first school a prospect visits or if another school hits it out of the park.
“For a top guy who may be visiting this first weekend, then going on three more trips after, ‘Is that feeling of Ohio State still going to last?'” Pantoni asked. “Because obviously the red carpet’s going to be rolled out everywhere. So we just have to do a great job, and then after the visit, we have to do a great job of staying in touch. Hopefully for some of these kids, I think the attraction of coming unofficially for a game will be there, so hopefully we can make that work in a lot of these cases.”
Most top prospects have already planned their visits for June, so coaches have been preparing for weeks that they would have a high number of prospects on campus.
What they’re trying to do, however, is balance out the 2022 prospects that want to take official visits and the 2023 recruits who want to come to campus on unofficial visits. Pantoni said Ohio State has encouraged underclassmen to try to visit during the week, which leaves the weekends open for the coaches to host 2022 prospects on official visits.
Pantoni estimated that Ohio State will host 51 official visitors in June, where the school typically hosts 40 to 50 in an entire year. Having the recruits in for official visits in June won’t all be bad, though, as it gives the coaches more time to spend with the prospects to help build relationships.
“Either if it’s during the summer or after the season, I think we’ve had the most success in those instances,” Pantoni said. “If these kids are going for game visits, a lot of these schools they’re visiting have really impressive home games because they’re going to pick the biggest games to go see. So, with all being equal, the game day experience I don’t think trumps the relationship with our players and coaches.”
Add in that coaches are bringing in 2023 prospects for camps in June to try to get in-person evaluations, and it’s going to be a busy month for everyone involved.
The most interesting recruit in the world
If he was old enough, Addison Nichols could probably fill in on some beer commercials for the most interesting man in the world.
Nichols is a 6-foot-5, 301-pound offensive lineman from Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia. He’s the No. 111-ranked prospect overall and has some of the biggest schools in the country after him.
It’s what Nichols does off the field that separates him from a normal high-profile recruit.
Nichols taught himself how to play the piano, the ukulele and the guitar. He owns a second-degree black belt in taekwondo, something his parents, Brian and Missy, signed him up for in elementary school because they thought it would help with flexibility and coordination.
He started playing golf as a 3-year-old, and now as a teenager, he can crush the ball 300 yards off the tee. He took a small break from the golf team, but decided to rejoin this season and is trying his hand at competitive golf one last time in high school.
“It’s hard this year to go from aggressive football to the finesse of golf,” Brian said. “When he was younger, he would play in tournaments and stuff like that, but it’s hard for him to slow his swing down and not overswing now. He can kill it well over 300 off the tee, so everyone loves that, especially in scrambles.”
Nichols also throws discus for his high school’s track team and is hoping to carry that over into college. He played basketball as a child and added Cub Scouts to his growing list of activities in elementary school. He stuck with Cub Scouts through Boy Scouts and earned the achievement of Eagle Scout this past year.
“Cub Scouts is kind of like hanging out with your dad — you do arts and crafts with your dad, but once you get to Boy Scouts, you have to do merit badges,” said Nichols, who has a 3.77 GPA, volunteered and provided home improvement services with his church and has been a part-time Kroger employee since 2018. “You have to go camping and hiking. It was definitely a lot of work, especially at the end doing my Eagle Scout project and everything that goes into it.
“It’s not something that happens overnight.”
That work and dedication in activities outside of football have been noticed by college coaches so far in his recruitment. His top five schools include Florida, Georgia, Ohio State, Tennessee and USC, but he has other schools he’s still considering, including North Carolina and Virginia.
The college coaches have made his off-field accomplishments a point of topic in conversations and have even used it as a bonding tool in some cases.
“Mack Brown at North Carolina, when he was doing a virtual with him, Mack said he’s an Eagle Scout, so he connected with that,” Brian said. “Coach Mullen at Florida, he knew about Addison, but we were going through all this stuff and he said, ‘I liked you before, but I really like you now.’ A lot of them have gotten into it and noticed the effort and dedication that goes into it.”