IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT CU HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RECRUITING

CU fans, it’s time we have a tough talk about the state of high school football recruiting.

But first, a disclaimer that I’m 99% certain most fans will not remember by the end of this post — this is not a panic post. BuffsBlog is not panicked about the state of the program. In fact, we expect that CU will close relatively well on the high school recruiting front, potentially adding highly touted players like Cederian Morgan, Joseph Peko, Rodney Colton Jr., Manoah Fapusa, Jase Matthews, and Jordan Clay.

BUT….(there’s always a but)

High school recruiting has been awful so far this year, largely due to a lack of numbers.

CU currently has commits from 4 high school players — DL Domato Peko Jr. (son of defensive line coach Domato Peko Sr.), CB Maurice Williams, S Preston Ashley, and TE Gavin Mueller. [For the record, I think Gavin Mueller is going to be a difference maker for CU.]

CU’s high school recruiting class is currently ranked #106 nationally. Compare to last year, when CU’s high school recruiting class ranked #38 nationally (in both rankings, transfers are not included).

Why the difference?

Last year, per 247Sports, CU had 18 players come on official visist. Of those 18 players, CU received commtiments from 11 of them to play football in Boulder. That’s a 61.11% “hit rate” on getting players that visit Boulder to commit.

This year, per 247Sports, CU has had 37 players come on official visits. Thus far, CU has received commitments from 2 of them to play in Boulder. That’s a 5.4% “hit rate” on getting players that visit Boulder to commit. [Yes, this statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt because we’re early in the recruiting process and some of these players may eventually commit to CU. However, it does seem to demonstrate a precipitous drop in high school recruiting so far this year.]

Ouch.

Much of the difference here can be explained by Deion Sanders’ absence from Boulder this summer. Obviously, Deion Sanders’ health needs to be the primary focus. However, it’s silly to say that his absence doesn’t directly and materially impact CU’s recruiting efforts. Because Deion Sanders doesn’t do in-home visits with players and hasn’t been around this summer to meet with players on their official visits in Boulder, his ability to meet with and convince players to come to Boulder has been essentially removed from CU’s recruiting equation. As a result, we get results like the following for Big 12 recruiting, as measured by 247Sports:

Rank	Team	Commits	5-stars	4-stars	3-stars	Avg Rating	Overall Score
1	BYU	16	1	2	13	87.94	206.82
2	Kansas	19	0	3	16	87.24	204.42
3	Arizona State	17	0	2	15	87.13	198.90
4	West Virginia	22	0	0	22	85.97	192.05
5	TCU	15	0	3	12	87.45	191.11
6	Baylor	14	0	4	10	87.73	187.25
7	Texas Tech	15	0	0	15	87.20	184.64
8	Arizona	16	0	1	15	85.86	179.40
9	Iowa State	17	0	0	16	86.11	179.37
10	Kansas State	16	0	0	16	86.21	178.71
11	Cincinnati	18	0	0	17	85.70	177.78
12	Oklahoma State	12	0	3	9	87.42	170.56
13	UCF	14	0	1	13	86.02	168.79
14	Utah	13	0	0	13	85.92	160.42
15	Houston	10	1	0	9	88.29	157.77
16	Colorado	4	0	1	3	87.66	69.35

Houston and OSU, the schools with the next lowest number of recruits after CU, each have 10 commits.

CU has the lowest recruiting ranking among all Power 4 schools and is currently ranked below Sacramento State, Eastern Michigan, James Madison, South Alabama, Bowling Green, Northern Arizona, Buffalo, and UC Davis.

Ouch.

I can hear some people right now saying, “Wait a minute. This has always been the plan. CU is always taking fewer high school players than other teams and low high school recruiting rankings should be expected given the way CU thinks about roster management.”

Let’s dive ino that line of thinking.

First, the number of offiical visits this year swelled to 37, much higher than it’s been in prior years at CU under Deion Sanders. This seems to indicate that there was an intent to go heavier on high school players this year.

Second, Deion Sanders said when he was hired that CU would shift its recruiting efforts over time to recruit more high school players and fewer transfers. This third year of Deion Sanders’ regime would be a reasonable time to start to see this shift happening. It’s obviously not happening this year (or at least appears highly unlikely to happen this year).

Third, my sources indicated to me before the summer that CU was going to sign more players this year (more than 20) than it had previously under Deion Sanders. This doesn’t look to be the case.

The impact of this high school recruiting class may be that CU is “forced” to continue its 50+ transfers/year method of roster management for another year, with the hope of starting the transition to more high school players beginning with next year’s recrutiting class. And that’s not the end of the world, and that’s why we’re not panicking. Still, there are real concerns over whether a team can create a dominant and cohesive offensive line, for example, out of transfer players. Many experts think that it’s very difficult to get “plus-level” offensive linemen, defensive ends, and linebackers in the transfer portal (they are well paid positions and therefore have little reason to transfer) and that it’s much easier to get these positions via the high school ranks.

SO, I think it’s safe to say that recruiting efforts have been extremely disappointing thus far relative to expectation. CU has lost out on a lot of players that visited Boulder and that could be difference makers for CU — including Deacon Schmitt (Oklahoma), Oscar Rios (Arizona), Jordan Deck (Baylor), KJ Edwards (Texas A&M), Johnnie Jones (UCLA), G’Nivre Carr (Florida), Vance Spafford (Miami), and it’s looking increasingly likely that players like Breck Kolojay (Georgia) and Felix Ojo (Texas) are going elsewhere, too. [I suspect CU will continue to recruit many of these players up until signing day, and it’s possible that CU can get one or several of them to flip but it’s always a bit of an uphill batlle to get a committed player to change allegiances after an initial commitment.]

One last thing to mention — the lack of HS recruiting is not because CU is getting outspent. CU has said that they will fully spend the House settlement amount ($20.5m/year), which means CU should have as much to spend as any other school in the country.

So what’s next?

First, CU needs Deion Sanders to get healthy. A healthy Deion Sanders is worth a lot — a lot a lot — for CU on the recruiting front.

Second, it might be time for Deion Sanders to changes his policy of refusing to do in-home visits. While most in-home visits happen in the spring and therefore changing this policy won’t necessarily help recruiting this year, CU should evaluate at all of its recruiting procedures to find new ways to maximize success.

Third, the CU staff needs to look in the mirror and try to assess why it’s had a difficult time this summer getting commitments from players on official visits to Boulder. CU neees another “closer” besides Deion Sanders.