PROVO — Live sporting events around the country have mostly been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, but the game known as college football recruiting furiously continues, perhaps more than ever before.
USA Today reported Monday that more than 600 high school prospects in the 2021 class have already verbally committed to programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision, which is more than twice the number of commits from this time a year ago. On-campus recruiting and in-person visits were suspended March 13 due to fears over the spread of COVID-19, so many recruits are committing early for fear of missing out on the flurry of offers, the newspaper surmised.
Recruiting efforts at BYU have been just as heated since the pandemic began, new executive coordinator of recruiting and player personnel Jasen Ah You said Monday in a video conference call. But offers aren’t flying out of Provo at a record pace, the former support services coordinator and NFL liaison said.
“We are going to be more selective of who we are offering, but also who we are committing to and who we are going to accept those commitments from,” said Ah You, who has pretty much been handling recruiting coordinator responsibilities at BYU since Alema Fitisemanu stepped down in early March.
As of Tuesday, BYU had just four commitments from the class of 2021, most notably highly touted Timpview athlete Raider Damuni, son of Ah You’s sidekick for BYU’s football recruiting efforts going forward, Jack Damuni.
Ah You said recruiting is “amped up” throughout the country “because everybody is home watching film, looking at these recruits, probably more than they ever had before because game-planning, practice-planning, has not been the focal point. Everybody has been focused on recruiting.”
BYU is being selective because it faces a “scholarship crunch” due to the large amount of missionaries who signed before they left and will be returning before the 2021 and 2022 seasons, Ah You said.
“We have a very finite number of people we can commit,” he said. “This class is going to be a smaller class, and just being able to manage it properly is difficult.”
Ah You, who has been on the BYU football support staff since 2016, said they have “tried to flip the roster in the last four years” in an attempt to get head coach Kalani Sitake’s preferred recruits into the program.
“We’ve done a great job of sending guys on missions and so forth, but now they are all coming back and so this next couple of classes is going to be very small,” Ah You said.
As for the 2020 class which was signed in February, about half of the 27 recruits who signed will go on missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before enrolling, including three-star linebackers Bodie Schoonover of American Fork and Tate Romney of Chandler, Arizona. Still, Ah You said, the 2020 roster is full and he doesn’t expect any late additions from the transfer portal.
“We are always going to look for the best athletes that are out there and are available,” Ah You said. “But to bring someone else on, we would have to let someone else go, right? Because there are 85 scholarships that we are allowed to have. So we are full, and we are very happy with the team that we have, the guys that we have on our team.”
The 2020 team will include at least one addition from the transfer portal, former Utah running back Devonta’e Henry Cole, who signed in February. Having had success with South Carolina transfer Ty’Son Williams and Rice transfer Emmanuel Esukpa out of the portal last year, Ah You said getting fifth-year graduate transfers will continue to be a priority for the Cougars — when they have room.
“We are always going to look for the best athletes that are out there and are available. But to bring someone else on, we would have to let someone else go, right? Because there are 85 scholarships that we are allowed to have. So we are full, and we are very happy with the team that we have, the guys that we have on our team.” — BYU recruiting coordinator Jasen Ah You
“The transfer portal is going to be huge for us,” he said. “We can find a quick fix, find someone that can come in and is already a college athlete, knows what is expected of them, and get those guys to come in contribute right away.”
Ah You said the “hard part” is getting the transfers accepted into a graduate program at BYU, which are “very competitive” and difficult to gain admittance.
“We have been very fortunate that we have had had some incredible graduate programs that are willing where our guys may not have the academic (achievement), but the (programs) are willing to listen and see the hearts of these guys,” he said. “Emmanuel and Ty’Son were great representatives of those guys who do that.”
As the Deseret News reported Tuesday, the NCAA’s ban on in-person recruiting will likely be extended past June, which will put an even greater emphasis on phone calls, Zoom meetings and FaceTime usage for BYU coaches who traditionally have utilized on-campus camps and 7-on-7 competitions in June for player evaluation.
To offset that, Ah You said BYU is upping its social media game behind the talents of creative services director Dave Broberg, director of marketing and promotions David Almodova, director of new media Stuart Call and Damuni to reach recruits and keep the football program in their thoughts.
“We try to constantly have 10 to 11 social media impressions (per day),” he said. “That is one way we have had to adapt, more so than we have had in the past, to make sure we have those and are reaching out to our athletes, doing edits and those things so they see we are relevant. That’s one of the biggest things we have done differently.”
Ah You said his staff and the aforementioned athletic department personnel have been “working nonstop since day 1” to put together virtual tours for recruits who can’t visit or be visited.
“Not everyone can travel,” he said. “Being able to show the city of Provo, show the locker room, use those virtual tours, I think that is going to be a big part of our program moving forward because not everyone can afford to come take an unofficial visit. So we gotta showcase those things and let them experience that.”
BYU’s class of 2021 football commitments
• Raider Damuni ATH 6-2, 190 Provo, Utah (Timpview High School)
• Tevita Mafileo ATH 6-5, 175 Sandy, Utah (Jordan High School)
• Kyson Hall WR 5-11, 175 Spanish Fork, Utah (Maple Mountain High School)
• Ricky Wolfgramm OLB 6-1, 235 Salt Lake City, Utah (East High School)