Neal Brown Not Planning Too Far Ahead When it Comes to Recruiting Weekends
On Monday (May 11, 2020), the NCAA announced a blanket waiver allowing any Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) or Football Championship Series (FCS) coach to contact any prospective student-athlete starting May 20 through the recruiting dead period, which by Wednesday was extended through to June 30, at their discretion. In other words, coaches can now make unlimited phone calls to the class of 2021 recruits.
However, a critical area in recruiting for West Virginia is getting prospects on campus and with the dead period extending through June 30, the likely hood of summer camps and visits has diminished.
“I probably would be surprised if we’re allowed to have any kind of recruiting visitors on campus over the summer,” said West Virginia head coach Neal Brown.
With the current model of college football season preparation at four to six weeks before the opening day of the season, that all but closed the door for coaches to have a recruiting weekend.
Instead, Neal Brown and his staff will continue to send virtual tours of the facilities, the town, and the campus. Hopefully, at some point, the coaching staff can start putting a plan in place for a visitors weekend before the season starts, but honestly, I doubt that can happen because around that time, the preseason plans should be unveiled and season preparation will begin.
We’re not making plans, or anything till we learn what the rules are,” said Brown. “I think you got to be careful with this because you don’t want to waste time. I haven’t set here and gone through a detailed camp-plan or a detailed four to six-week return to play because I don’t want to sit here and waste time on unknowns. I don’t really know what it's going to be yet. And, it’s the same thing with these official visits. We initially were going to have a huge recruiting weekend in the middle of June, we will not have that. But, outside of that, we’re trying not to make a whole lot of plans just because we haven’t been any indications on what the rules are going to be. My gut says there won’t be any, but I don’t know.”
Neal Brown also added that transfers won’t get the opportunity to visit with such a small window of opportunity to find a new home. Nonetheless, the Mountaineers were able to pick up Arizona transfer Scottie Young Jr. over the weekend, and in this case, it was the relationship defensive backs coach Jahmile had with Young in his time in Arizona as an assistant from 2016-17.
You can follow us for future coverage by clicking "Follow" on the top righthand corner of the page. Also, be sure to like us on Facebook & Twitter:
Facebook - @WVUonSI
Twitter - @SI_WVU and Christopher Hall @WVHallBilly
