recruiting in florida

[smazza]

 A  hotbed for college prospects

Coaches are flocking to the state's high school spring practices.

By Alan Schmadtke | Sentinel Staff Writer

Posted May 2, 2004

Shortly after spring football practice ended, Bobby Petrino's coaching staff at Louisville assembled a plan on how best to attack recruiting over the next month.

Their solution: Send five assistants to Florida.

"We're in Kentucky, but Florida's a primary state for us," Petrino said.

Connecticut Coach Randy Edsall came to a similar conclusion; he'll send four assistants to Florida, and at some point he'll join them. At East Carolina, second-year Coach John Thompson goes with the same plan -- four plus himself. North Carolina State will use three assistants and Coach Chuck Amato.

And it's not just the big boys. For instance, Division I-AA Southern Illinois will send four coaches to Florida.

Coaches from I-A powers to Division III non-scholarship programs start converging on Florida on Monday for their own version of spring break. Most of the state's high schools open spring football practice Monday, and the opening of practice comes in the middle of an NCAA-sanctioned evaluation period for colleges, four weeks that begin a recruiting process that ends 10 months later on National Signing Day in February.

There were 302 Division I-A signees from Florida high schools in February, and another 244 players signed with Division I-AA programs. Longtime Orlando Sentinel reporter Bill Buchalter, who has tracked recruiting in the state for nearly 30 years, said at least 250 state players a year have signed with I-A schools over the past decade. Growth at UCF and USF has pushed the number beyond 300 the past couple of years.

Another day, another audition

At high schools with a handful of I-A prospects -- Tallahassee Lincoln, for instance -- spring practice is more like a spring audition. Some days, there will be more college coaches taking notes than high school coaches actually coaching.

"It's a madhouse -- a welcome madhouse," Lincoln Coach David Wilson said. "These guys are all looking for players, and we've got 'em. If I don't have them, somebody else does."

Florida's importance in the feeding of America's college football programs is hardly a secret. There are 117 Division I-A programs, and 105 had at least one Floridian on their rosters last season and 26 had at least 10. Five conferences -- the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Conference USA, Mid-American and Southeastern -- had at least 140 Floridians playing in their leagues.

The state's population boom over the past 30 years led to a natural phenomenon. More people mean more teenagers, and more teens mean more athletes. And in Florida, more athletes mean more football players.

Part of the reason for such high numbers is opportunity. Though Florida high schools routinely score low on academic comparisons nationally, they permit something many states don't -- spring football practice. Florida is one of 13 states that sanctions spring football, and of those other 12, only Texas has a population to rival Florida.

Officially, high school spring drills in Florida started Saturday, though most coaches decided to wait until Monday. Unlike in the fall, when college coaches look at prospects up close only during games, spring football is a much more intimate football experience.

By NCAA rule, college recruiters aren't allowed to talk to players at this time of the year. But there are no restrictions on watching -- and making sure you're seen.

"That's the great part," Edsall said. "You can't put a value on what it means to eyeball a player. Outside of being able to tell what he is really like physically, you watch him practice and you can see how he takes coaching, how he reacts to certain situations, how he reacts and moves and thinks. It's invaluable."

East Carolina defensive coordinator Jerry Odom, a former standout at Merritt Island High and Florida and a former UF assistant, calls this the "research phase of the job."

"You don't want to bring in bad players that are good kids or good players that are bad kids," he said.

Coaches may visit 6-8 school a day

For recruiters, May days are fairly standard. It's a big state. There's usually too much ground to cover and not enough time to cover it. The object is to hit as many schools and talk to as many coaches as possible in a 10- to 12-hour span. Six to eight schools a day is the norm.

"I'm usually on my way to a school by 7:30. I at least want to be there by 8," Odom said.

Once school lets out, most coaches backtrack, catching the early part of a practice. If a coach sees what he needs to see quickly enough, he can get to a second practice at another nearby school.

Odom knows all the back roads and most of the potential traffic jams. "You never want to get stuck in traffic," he said. "Even with a cell phone, that's completely unproductive for what we're doing down there."

High school coaches are more than helpful. They make copies of game video. They fill in the blanks about their players' academics and character. Some set up meetings with academic advisers. At practice, most let recruiters stand around the field, 20 to 30 yards from the objects of their affection or evaluation. Some permit the assistants, all of whom wear their school colors or logo, to stand on the field behind the huddle.

"When I go watch [college spring] practice, they put me on the field, so I extend the same courtesy," Edgewater Coach Bill Gierke said.

"They want people to know they're there," Palm Bay Coach Dan Burke said. "The kids know, I guarantee you."

Many high school coaches see dealing with college recruiters as part of their duty to their players.

"Is doing this in my job description? No," Wilson said. "Do I have a responsibility on a personal level? I feel I do. For me, it's a personal commitment because I ask my players to commit to me, too. It works both ways."

With so many coaches representing so many schools, nuances develop. They come in all forms. College head coaches -- most of whom leave spring evaluations to assistants -- have varying wish lists from their Florida visitors. Edsall, for instance, wants to know with some certainty which players have Miami, Florida State and Florida on their wish list (and vice versa).

"We're not going to chase ghosts. The last thing you want to do is spend the money to go down there and spin your wheels," said Edsall, who first recruited Florida when he was an assistant at Syracuse and did so again while working at Boston College and Georgia Tech.

"If it's not the first question, it's the second: 'How do you feel about leaving the state?' " Southern Illinois assistant Tom Matukewicz said. "If a kid says he wants to stay home, in our case, we're not going to beat Florida Atlantic on him. So you don't waste your time. You move on to the next guy; there's always a next guy."

At UCF, this month is the first full-staff blanketing of the state for new Coach George O'Leary's staff. All nine assistants are assigned parts of Florida.

If Golden Knights coaches don't get into every school in the state, they at least want to have talked to every coach. Building relationships and cultivating them -- a foundation of recruiting -- is central.

"Prospect or suspect, we want to know about every kid in the state that has an interest in UCF or that we might have an interest in," recruiting coordinator Brian Polian said. "Once we have a feel for that, we're going to hammer out the academics and really narrow down our list. We want to come out of May with a great idea of who our core guys are, and then we'll focus on them."

Some staffs don't get quite so detailed this early in the recruiting process; National Signing Day is still 10 months away. Some coaches merely want to identify as many players as possible to track during the fall.

It's also an opportunity to get ahead for the next year.

"I get asked a lot about my sophomores and juniors," Gierke said. "A kid does something at practice, and some coach pulls me aside later and says, 'What year is '24'? A lot of them want to figure out who they're going to be looking at harder next year."

'Everybody and his brother's there now'

Spring practice in Florida wasn't always like happy hour at a beachside resort.

"Besides the guys from Florida, I'd run into three guys," said NC State assistant Doc Holliday, who has recruited the Sunshine State since 1980 for either West Virginia or the Wolfpack. "Back then, we were in seventh heaven. It's not like now. Everybody and his brother's there now."

USF defensive coordinator Wally Burnham started recruiting Florida full-time in 1985, the year he joined Bobby Bowden's staff at Florida State. The Seminoles were laying the building blocks for a decade-long dynasty, and during springs, there weren't many people around to take notes -- or players.

"You might have a Michigan or a Notre Dame down here," Burnham said. "Very seldom did you have anybody from the MAC or the Big East around, usually if there was some sort of connection to a coach and a school. Now you can't find a major-conference or minor-conference school that doesn't recruit Florida year-round. The landscape in this state has changed completely."

Burnham paused, perhaps wistful for days when Florida recruiting was the best-kept secret in college football.

Even so, Florida colleges don't spend much time encouraging high school coaches to steer players to state schools. There simply are too many prospects and too few scholarships among the five I-A schools and the four I-AAs in Florida.

Holliday and others cope by digging in. He sticks to South Florida, blanketing every school in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, plus the fertile ground around Lake Okeechobee, in towns such as Belle Glade, Pahokee and Okeechobee.

"The thing about recruiting down in South Florida is those coaches normally have some Division I players every year," Holliday said. "If they don't have them this year, you know they'll have them next year."

[FLIPSTYLE]

these people need to stick to recruiting in their own unrespective states! However, since they won't CJL is going to beat them out on recruits

[bulldad]

Spring practice has always been fun for me as a hs coach.  I get to meet alot of the college guys and have great conversations with them.   We have been fortunate the last couple of years to have DI players so we get to see a bunch.  this year we have a great one.  I know that ND and Mich will be down to look at him plus all the Florida schools. I keep whispering USF in his ear - we'll see.

[bulls96go]

Franks needs to lock down tampa

nothing should leave this area that we want

it should only take two to  three years to get there