It is getting close to crunch time.

The all-important recruiting Letter of Intent Day (LOI Day) is fast approaching; February 3^rd is the date this year with April 1^st as the last day the National Letter of Intent (NLI) can be signed for players to qualify for the 2016 recruiting class and football season.

Pitt is pushing hard for verbals from Central Catholic’s 4* Safety Damar Hamlin, a and Khaleke Hudson a 3* Athlete from McKeesport.  Both are local guys who Narduzzi very much wants to land for several reason, not the least of which is that they are local kids and both are being recruited by Penn State and other top name programs like OSU and Michigan and have many other prime offers.  If Narduzzi lands these two guys other recruits will sit up and take notice for their future choices.

On the other side of this is the angst we have about kids who are already committed to Pitt being actively recruited by other programs up to and sometimes including LOI Day. Such as highly sought after 3* Henry Miller of Kissimmee, FL. He’s a CB who will serve us well in two ways: first he’s a good play and we need CBs but secondly, he’s a Florida recruit and if you want your program to grow into a solid winning one those Florida kids with their speed are good ones to land.

For example, the kid, Miller, who all the fuss is about is only a 3rd (!) string All-Conference in Florida’s 8A classification.  8A is the biggest but that goes to show how much pure talent there is in that state… also the fact that Miami waited until Jan 19th to offer Miller means they were looking at a lot of other players before Miller.

But as has happened in the past with every program, save the biggest maybe, Miller is under intense pressure to drop his Pitt verbal and take entree’ offers from Miami and OSU as they want him on campus for a visit as that tends to be the tipping point with some recruits.  It isn’t an easy thing for either Miller or Pitt to contemplate. He wants to honor his commitment but then we read this:

“I enjoyed it up there, talking to the players and hanging out with my host and talking to the coaches and seeing the city life and all of that … I enjoyed it a lot,” Miller said.  He just needs to figure out what he’s going to do.  It has been quite hectic for Miller. “It’s been real difficult,” Miller said. “It’s been a real crazy process socially, recruiting and everything, It’s just been wild.

“I don’t know if I’m going to take my last two visits. If I’m going to take those last two visits, though, I want to make sure the offers are firm.”  He doesn’t want Pitt deciding to go in another direction and then have things not work out with Ohio State or Miami. Then he would have no options and National Signing Day is only about two weeks away, Feb. 3.

“If I do take my last two visits, Pittsburgh is going to go looking around to find somebody to replace my spot,” Miller said.

Well, I’m not sure that would happen with this particular recruit.  Pitt wants him badly and needs him and I doubt Narduzzi would pull his offer just because the kid visited elsewhere, nut he might.  Look, Pitt is approaching and recruiting this kid like he’s a 5* recruit in the amount of time, effort, and not the least, money they are expending on him.  Case in point:

Miller, who also played quarterback for four years at Gateway, was supposed to be excited about those visits. Any kid would be. His commitment to Pitt, however, quelled his enthusiasm, and so did the fact that Pitt defensive coordinator Josh Conklin ran into Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano and Miami assistant coach Ephraim Banda as they were leaving Gateway.

Instead of the visits being exciting for Miller, things actually turned out to be somewhat embarrassing and awkward.

“They asked Coach Roberts if that was Ohio State and Miami who just left and he told them, ‘Yes,’” Miller said of Gateway head coach Marlin Roberts. “[Conklin] knew before I even sat down with him.  “He was like, ‘Was that Ohio State and Miami I just saw?’ and I was like, ‘Ahh man .. yeah’ and we talked about it.”

We fans may pound our chest and say “Cut him loose, we only want kids who want to be here” but the reality of the situation is very different through the staff’s eyes.  Miami ratcheted up the pressure  yesterday when Miami formally offered Henry a scholarship so I’d think the possibility of an official (on-campus) visit has jump up greatly.  If OSU gets serious and turns on the Saban burners Miller will be hard to hold onto.

I personally do not believe an 8-5 season is any semblance of a show of strength enough for Pitt to be arrogant and picky about issues like these… it isn’t like we have another CB just as talented and highly recruited as Miller beating down the door for a Pitt offer… regardless of what the Pitt staff may have inferred to him.

All we have to do as fans, actually all we can do, is sit back and hope for the best.  That’s easy on our part.  But the coaching staffs are in full attack mode to finish out this 2016 recruiting class with a bang.  All they have to get is get the players they desperately want and need to sign on the dotted line.

For some background to those unfamiliar with this part of the recruiting process the bottom line is this: a recruit can tell any school that he is ‘verballing’ to them (a verbal commitment to play the next season with that program) but it holds no formal sway at all. The finalization of the recruit’s journey, and the school’s chasing him, is his signing the NLI and agreeing to accept athletic aid (a scholarship) in return for his services.

So, we fans can look at the four recruiting sites; see and discuss who we have as verbals and where we stand in relation to the other D1 / FBS schools… but it doesn’t matter until the ink literally hits the paper on the NLI and the paper is in the school’s possession.

Here is a video that explains the NCAA side of things between the student and the NLI.

But Wait!!  That’s not all.

Here is something most don’t know – it is not mandatory for a student to sign a NLI and still play football for a D1 school.

“The NLI is a voluntary program with regard to both institutions and student-athletes. No prospective student-athlete or parent is required to sign the NLI and no institution is required to join the program.

The NLI is a binding agreement between a prospective student-athlete and an NLI member institution. A prospective student-athlete agrees to attend the institution full-time for one academic year (two semesters or three quarters). The institution agrees to provide athletics financial aid for one academic year (two semesters or three quarters).

The penalty for not fulfilling the NLI agreement: A student-athlete has to serve one year in residence (full-time, two semesters or three quarters) at the next NLI member institution and lose one season of competition in all sports.

Here are some valid and very interesting points about how it is in the highly sought after recruits intrest to NOT sign an NLI on the LOI Day but instead wait until April 1^st …or not sign at all.  The NLI really protects only the school’s vested interest in the recruit and not the other way around.

“Though most players don’t realize it, they do not have to sign the NLI to receive a scholarship. They need only sign a financial aid agreement at their chosen school. The financial aid paperwork provides (almost) the same guarantee of a scholarship as the NLI, but unlike the NLI, it doesn’t strip the player of the only leverage he’ll have until he graduates from college.

Why is the NLI the worst contract in American sports? It requires players to sign away their right to be recruited by other schools. If they don’t enroll at the school with which they signed, they forfeit a year of eligibility. Not a redshirt year, but one of their four years to play. In return, the NLI guarantees the player nothing.

Sure, the NLI claims to guarantee a scholarship, but that simply isn’t true. That is contingent on the player being admitted to the school and on the football program staying below the 85-scholarship limit.

A school can dump the player at any point between Signing Day and preseason camp, and he would have no recourse. This guarantee is no different than the one on a conference-approved financial aid form, but it costs the player something the financial aid agreement does not.”

Most often this would be beneficial if there are going to be coaching staff changes in the target school and we know that those happen mostly soon after the NLI signing day.

What I can’t find an answer for is ‘can a recruit switch schools at the D1 FBS level without having to sit out if he does not sign the original NLI with his 1^st school?’  Here is the .pdf on the NLI Letter details but it doesn’t address not signing.

A key issue for a school’s football staff in the waiting time just before LOI Day is that there is a firm 72 hour “dead period” prior to which means the coaches can’t visit the recruit and try to convince the kid to honor his commitment.  That has to be the most stressful time a HC has other than actually playing football during the season.

Pitt has had some real disappointing things happen right before the Big Day.  Last year QB Alex Hornibrook followed Paul Chryst to Wisconsin. Two years ago highly touted “QB of Pitt’s future” Wade Freebeck reneged on his promise and ditched Pitt for Vanderbilt.  With those two kids it wasn’t the star ratings that were so great but they were highly rated QBs who we very much needed on the roster.

But as the world turns Pitt has been on the receiving end of players who renege on their commitment to a big program and decide “Pitt is it!”  Ejuan Price comes to mind.  Price, now 65 years old and having been in the program for 46 years, visited The Ohio State university in January of 2010 then signed his LOI with the Buckeyes a month later in Feb.

Price wasn’t happy with some of the confusing and negative things happening at OSU and asked for, and was granted, a release from his NLI.  That is pretty unusual and had it been a lesser program than OSU he most probably would have not been allowed a release.  But, given that he was formally released from his NLI, he could and did play for Pitt that season and the rest is history.

This year Narduzzi has flipped two Rutgers recruits,  ATH Phil Campbell and OL Justin Morgan, both 3* recruits and just how nice did it feel to stick it to an old BE rival?

But mostly it is recruits leaving Pitt at the last moment…

For instance we saw some huge turnover after Wannstedt was fired in 2011, to fresh to even delve into but needless to say that fractured class had a negative impact up until last season… but that was due to a HC firing. The more unusual class defections at Pitt took place with the HC firmly in place Walt Harris was our coach.

The Harris defections were a huge problem for Pitt at the time.

When running backs James Bryant of Reading and Andrew Johnson of North Hills signed with Miami, Penn Hills quarterback Anthony Morelli with Penn State, Pahokee (Fla.) cornerback Alphonso Smith with Wake Forest and Dade City (Fla.) Pasco receiver Johnny Peyton with South Florida, a devastated Walt Harris was left searching for answers of how Pitt’s potential top-25 class went astray.

“That class,” national recruiting analyst Tom Lemming said, “might have cost Walt Harris his job.”

Anyway, with all our  waiting and talking about who Narduzzi might be able to grab at the last two weeks or so I was wondering what Pitt has done historically in ‘closing’ recruits to fill the quotas and/or positions needed.

We know who we have verballed at this point and it’s a pretty good class so far.  But the key from here on in is to get the players, in our case, two local stars

Something that regularly happens is that the most highly sought after recruits, those with the most and best scholarship offers, tend to wait until the last minute to commit themselves to a school.

They can do that because if you are a 4* or 5* recruit those schools that have been hounding you will make a spot for you to land… they aren’t going to tell a possible superstar that ‘there’s no room at the Inn”.

Here is a table showing the last ten years of Pitt’s late recruiting ‘gets’ those are the ones from Jan 1st until LOI Day.  There are some interesting points to see here.

First off look that the amount of last minute HS players the new Pitt HCs had to land after the coaching changes. Note that Wannstedt, Graham, Chryst and Narduzzi were all hired toward the end of December or the beginning of January.  Each new HC had to enlist over 40% of the total class as soon as they were hired until the 1st Wednesday of Feb.

I highlighted Todd Graham’s first class because it shows how tough he had it in recruiting after the lemmings marched of the cliff when DW was gone.

Granted there are a lot of those later committed  2* and 3* recruits who scintillated talent on the field and became great contributors and even star players for us.  The point though is that Pitt really just hasn’t been able to land those great white shark type recruits at the last minute with any regularity.

Only ten late stage 4* kids out of 242 total isn’t all that impressive… but is in-line with our recruiting as a whole.  Pitt’s overall recruiting is averaging in the high 2.0*s to the low 3.0*s on a regular basis. DW did a bit better in some of his years but we are right around the middle of the pack when it comes to FBC recruiting.

We’ll listen, watch, read, and discuss the current state of Pitt recruiting very closely, some fans as if their life depended on it, from now until Feb 7^th and we’ll keep our collective fingers crossed. If things hold as is and we get the two kids, Hamlin and Hudson mentioned above we’ll be very happy.  But just remember – it doesn’t always go as smoothly as we want it to.

On a separate note:

There have been some weird happenings with recruits right before they had to finally decide on committing to a school.  Here are two of them:

“When I worked at Georgia we had this top OL prospect with offers from all over the country coming in for a visit. His dad drove him down and dropped him off. After 48 hours the dad had not come back to pick him up. The coaches called (the father) and said it was a violation for him to be on campus for more than 48 hours.

The compliance office stepped in and made the kid sit on the curb outside the football building (Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall) and said we could have no contact with him. Who knows when his dad came back to get him. But he ended up signing with NC State and later was drafted in the NFL.”

With perhaps the most famous of all twists to a recruit’s LOI Day experience:

“Nothing compares to Kevin Hart’s story. The 6-foot-5, 290-pound offensive lineman at Fernley (Nev.) High wanted so badly to play college football that he wrote his own fairytale ending complete with press conference.

On February 1, 2008, Hart held a historic announcement at his high school in which he picked Cal over Oregon. “Coach Tedford and I talked a lot, and the fact that the head coach did most of the recruiting of me kind gave me that real personal experience,” Hart said at the announcement.

There was only one problem. Jeff Tedford had never spoken to, visited or contacted Mr. Hart. Neither had Oregon, Washington or Oklahoma State, his other finalists, for that matter. Eventually, Hart admitted the entire recruitment was fictitious and apologized to all parties involved.”

Here is a good video about the dangers of concussions in football….