Historically ASU has had VERY little success with players that eventually signed and had verbally recruited prior to August (and really September)
......but the repeated extensions of the Dead Period in the class of 2021 (and now in the class of 2022) may have changed things a bit (and who knows if they will be as long lasting as the addition of the December signing period created in Dec 2017.............particularly when Official Visits appear ready to resume in 8 weeks................my guess is that things largely return to the norm as recruits hope for big senior seasons to attract blueblood offers that they had yet to receive...and that 2nd tier programs will have to once again wait for many of their recruits to eventually commit)
In the 2021 cycle we obtained 10 verbal commitments prior to August that eventually signed with ASU (Finn Collins/Jaydon Williams/Tommi Hill/Lonyatta Alexander/Gharin Stansbury/RJ Regan/Isaia Glass/Eric Gentry/Eddie Czaplicki/Austin Berry) and 2 more prior to September (Isaiah Johnson/Ezra Dotson-Oyetade) ..............and the 11 days from July 15-July 25 was HUGE with 8 verbals.
Those 12 ranged from recruits that we seriously considered cutting loose (Barry........and so glad we did not) to players that we hung onto by the skin of our teeth (Stansbury.....with heavy pressure from Penn St and Texas). 5 of the 12 enrolled in January, participated in Spring Ball and all 5 of those (Gentry/Collins/Hill/Glass/Regan) received rave reviews
With that alone I believe that the class of 2021 early commitments were the best in ASU football recruiting history. (it is no longer just on paper, but it is still undoubtedly early).............but now to add Johnson/Dotson-Oyetade/Williams/Alexander/Stansbury/Czaplicki/Barry, it simply blows away anything we have ever accomplished that early in any cycle. (and non-early commitment Bethea was a hit in Spring Ball)
There will undoubtedly be some failures (recruits that never become starters) but every day it appears more and more as those will be due to being over-recruited rather than being non-P5 starter-level-talent
The bad news for recruiting junkies was that the 2021 cycle only produced 2 more prep recruits (Sione Veikoso/Armon Bethea) from the end of August thru the final signing period in February that eventually signed with ASU. The good news is that the transfer market (particularly with the one-time immediate eligibility allowance for for non-grad transfers in 2021) kept us busy with speculation
.....and we added Jaylin Conyers (who already appears to be a non-brainer home run), Travez Moore (who also made it very clear that he will get a LOTTA reps in 2021) and Triston Miller (who's injury in Spring Ball left the early question marks to lingering)
Now in the class of 2022, we off to an even hotter start
But this time around there will almost certainly be Official Visits and the game goes back to the way it used to be played (at least to some degree................or does it?)
We are gonna have to bring a bunch in to the sweat box in June and then try to nail as many Official Visitors as possible this Fall (and unfortunately some important ones will likely have to be the weekend after the Southern Utah game and the weekend of the UNLV game (when it will still be scorching hot). Bring it on
......but the repeated extensions of the Dead Period in the class of 2021 (and now in the class of 2022) may have changed things a bit (and who knows if they will be as long lasting as the addition of the December signing period created in Dec 2017.............particularly when Official Visits appear ready to resume in 8 weeks................my guess is that things largely return to the norm as recruits hope for big senior seasons to attract blueblood offers that they had yet to receive...and that 2nd tier programs will have to once again wait for many of their recruits to eventually commit)
In the 2021 cycle we obtained 10 verbal commitments prior to August that eventually signed with ASU (Finn Collins/Jaydon Williams/Tommi Hill/Lonyatta Alexander/Gharin Stansbury/RJ Regan/Isaia Glass/Eric Gentry/Eddie Czaplicki/Austin Berry) and 2 more prior to September (Isaiah Johnson/Ezra Dotson-Oyetade) ..............and the 11 days from July 15-July 25 was HUGE with 8 verbals.
Those 12 ranged from recruits that we seriously considered cutting loose (Barry........and so glad we did not) to players that we hung onto by the skin of our teeth (Stansbury.....with heavy pressure from Penn St and Texas). 5 of the 12 enrolled in January, participated in Spring Ball and all 5 of those (Gentry/Collins/Hill/Glass/Regan) received rave reviews
With that alone I believe that the class of 2021 early commitments were the best in ASU football recruiting history. (it is no longer just on paper, but it is still undoubtedly early).............but now to add Johnson/Dotson-Oyetade/Williams/Alexander/Stansbury/Czaplicki/Barry, it simply blows away anything we have ever accomplished that early in any cycle. (and non-early commitment Bethea was a hit in Spring Ball)
There will undoubtedly be some failures (recruits that never become starters) but every day it appears more and more as those will be due to being over-recruited rather than being non-P5 starter-level-talent
The bad news for recruiting junkies was that the 2021 cycle only produced 2 more prep recruits (Sione Veikoso/Armon Bethea) from the end of August thru the final signing period in February that eventually signed with ASU. The good news is that the transfer market (particularly with the one-time immediate eligibility allowance for for non-grad transfers in 2021) kept us busy with speculation
.....and we added Jaylin Conyers (who already appears to be a non-brainer home run), Travez Moore (who also made it very clear that he will get a LOTTA reps in 2021) and Triston Miller (who's injury in Spring Ball left the early question marks to lingering)
Now in the class of 2022, we off to an even hotter start
But this time around there will almost certainly be Official Visits and the game goes back to the way it used to be played (at least to some degree................or does it?)
We are gonna have to bring a bunch in to the sweat box in June and then try to nail as many Official Visitors as possible this Fall (and unfortunately some important ones will likely have to be the weekend after the Southern Utah game and the weekend of the UNLV game (when it will still be scorching hot). Bring it on
