“It starts in-state.”
It’s almost a guarantee that whenever a new college football coach speaks publicly for the first time, that phrase or something similar will be uttered when talking about recruiting.
“We’ve been very upfront with how we want to do this thing, how we want to build Utah State. And I think the area coaches and Utah coaches are loving it”
— Utah State interim coach Nate Dreiling
Utah State interim head coach Nate Dreiling was no exception.
When addressing the media ahead of the season in early August, one of the first things Dreiling talked about — unasked and unprodded — was a renewed emphasis on recruiting the high school ranks in the state of Utah.
“My dad was my high school head coach,” Dreiling said. “My whole life I’ve been dealing with high school coaches. Half my friends are high school coaches. That is going to be our lifeline in recruiting and it starts in-state.
“The state of Utah, we had 48 guys go to DI football last year. There is no reason we shouldn’t have 10 to 15 players (from Utah) sign with us each year. And if we don’t get guys, because maybe they do get offers, we get ‘em when they come back home. But it is those type of people who have the values we want.”
Dreiling wasn’t alone in that sentiment.
Across the Utah State coaching staff, it was expressed again and again that there was a renewed commitment to recruiting high school kids in Utah.
“It starts with the state of Utah,” associate head coach Troy Morrell said. “We’ve got to do a better job here in the state of keeping the kids in-state.”
None of that was particularly out of the norm. Or would be usually, except for how things had gone under former Aggie head coach Blake Anderson.
During the Anderson era, USU had shied away from bringing in Utah high school talent to Utah State straight out of high school.
Not completely, but Anderson preferred to bring in FBS transfers and junior college transfers in an attempt to quickly rebuild his teams to remain competitive in the Mountain West Conference. After winning the 2021 league title, Anderson tried to avoid a rebuilding cycle. “Tried” being the operative word.
USU’s 2024 signing class totaled 40 players, and 23 were FBS transfers. Six players in that class were high school recruits and three of those were from Utah.
Utah State did bring in a lot of transfers who had played high school football in Utah, but the Aggies largely ignored the high school ranks.
Now, though, the Aggies have clearly reoriented toward recruiting local high school talent. Dreiling and company have backed up what they said they’d do.
Currently, Utah State has received commitments from 10 Utah high school recruits for the 2025 class, out of a group of 16 high school prospects committed.
The Aggies have recruited the junior college ranks too — USU has two juco commits so far — but there has been a clear emphasis on pursuing high school talent.
And it has worked. With the early signing period a week and a half away, USU is well situated, even with the uncertainty of who will be the program’s next head coach hanging over everything.
Why the emphasis on high school players
From Dreiling’s perspective, it just makes sense to recruit high school players. His life has been high school football, what with his dad being a legend in Kansas high school football.
There is a comfort level that exists with high school football coaches and players that doesn’t exist with the transfer portal.
“All of our relationships (as USU coaches), but especially in my life, are going through high school coaches,” Dreiling said. “Not just for recruiting, but to get to know them because that is the people that I grew up with, who I was around. My whole childhood was spent around high school coaches from the state of Kansas.”
When he was named the interim head coach at Utah State, one of the first things Dreiling did was to reach out to local high school coaches and let them know his philosophy.
“I let them know, ‘Guys, I got here in January. You guys have seen more Utah State games than I have. This is not my office, this is your office.’ Just really giving not only that message but following through with that, and having them come to practice and going to see their games and all that stuff.”
“We’ve been very upfront with how we want to do this thing, how we want to build Utah State,” he added. “And I think the area coaches and Utah coaches are loving it”
So, too, are the Aggie coaches.
Home-grown talent
Offensive line coach Cooper Bassett has been one of the major drivers of recruiting success in the state, along with tight ends coach DJ Tialavea, and Bassett is a firm believer that the only way to build USU football, especially in the trenches, is with local high school talent.
“I believe offensive linemen are grown. They are not bought and they are not found. Especially at our level,” Bassett said. “We are a developmental program, because we are not able to go out and window shop for players. Our back yard has some of the best offensive line talent and big man talent per capita. So it is our job to go find big bodies, develop them, grow ‘em up.”
He continued: “You look at our offensive line, the best players on it all came from the state of Utah, the high school ranks. So we are going to go out and find them. And there is no doubt that the success of this program is going to be built on the pipeline of Utah HS offensive linemen. If we can keep two to three to four offensive linemen from leaving the state in every class, this place will continue its consistency of success.”
A farm system?
Will the Aggies end up losing some of the high school kids that they’ve recruited?
In the modern era of college football, it is a near certainty. NIL and the transfer portal have allowed monied programs to use programs like USU as farm systems of a sort. USU will develop the talent and then bigger programs will reap the benefits.
But this Aggie coaching staff has embraced that reality.
Morrell, a three-time national championship winning coach at the junior college level, has dealt with it for the majority of his coaching career: developing players and having them leave. And he sees USU and almost all Group of Five programs as quasi-jucos now, given NIL.
“Essentially, schools like us, Utah State, are almost like a juco in that aspect when it comes to NIL,” Morrell said. “They are going to come and take your guys and give them huge amounts of money that can change their life.”
Morrell steadfastly believes targeting high school prospects is still priority No. 1, though. Especially in Utah.
“If they are a Division I player, they should be at one of the big three (BYU, Utah or Utah State),” he said. “People shouldn’t be able to come in here and get them. That is something we have to set our stake in the ground here, what we are going to do with the high school kids.”
As for how to keep them at Utah State, most of them at least, Morrell has experience with that.
“It all goes back to culture,” he said. “The development and things put in place for those guys so they can say, ‘Hey, I’m setting myself up academically at Utah State.’ Or if they have a chance to be that NFL guy, things are in place here to help develop them to get there, instead of them having to jump somewhere else.
“There are so many what-ifs when you transfer. Am I going to fit or am I not going to fit? Am I going to like it there? I think as we go through this NIL thing, you are going to see some guys who are going to go do well somewhere else and prosper. And you are going to see guys who went somewhere else and got that lump of money and then don’t know what is going to happen after that because they couldn’t make that transition for whatever reason.”
Dreiling and company may not be around to reap any of the benefits of the reemphasis on recruiting the high school football ranks. In fact, it is likely that few current Aggie coaches are around next year at this time.
That hasn’t prevented them from being optimistic about the future of Utah State football, though, or committed to building a foundation while they are here.
“I think the area coaches and Utah high school coaches are finally convincing their players to come up north an hour and a half (to Logan) instead of traveling to the West Coast or East Coast to play Power football,” Dreiling said. “You can get out of Salt Lake and be far enough away from home in a college town but still close enough that mom is going to come up and do your laundry. (Utah State) is a perfect spot for a lot of kids. Hopefully we can keep that model here, because there are so many good players in Utah.”