Whether it’s football or an Olympic sport, the lifeblood of any collegiate program is in recruiting. The average sports fan would be shocked how much time and effort a soccer or golf coach spends recruiting. It’s as much or more than a football coach, just with significantly less resources and manpower.
But since we are here to talk football, recruiting is without a doubt one of the two most critical factors to a successful program. The other is player development. When a program is strong in both of these areas, it usually produces positive results. Do it for a long period of time and you’re a powerhouse like Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State or USC.
Conversely, when a program slacks off in one of these areas, there’s a dip in the overall success. Even top programs like the aforementioned bluebloods of college football have periods where either they don’t recruit at such an elite level or their player development isn’t as strong as their rivals.
Sure, plenty of other factors go into specific wins and losses along the way. A negative culture or series of misfortunes can lead to a decline of a program, too. But in its simplest form, good college football programs excel at recruiting and developing players.
As it relates to Arizona football, there’s been growing frustration from some in the message board world with a lack of press-worthy recruiting success. Anything less than a four or five-star recruit is seen as just another player and not someone who will spark momentum or be that cornerstone, program-changing player. Heaven forbid a four-star player from Tucson doesn’t commit to Arizona, some react as though the whole football program should be shutdown for not hauling in a program-changer from down the street.
It’s rare that any 17 or 18-year old is the future program-changer (and that pressure can sometimes be what steers players in other directions). Sure, a Tim Tebow or Johnny Manziel come to mind for immediately elevating their programs, but they were not one-man shows. They were at powerhouse programs waiting for the right collection of talent to come together and break through on the national stage.
Arizona once thought it had its own program-changer at quarterback when Willie Tuitama arrived in Tucson. And arguably, despite only one winning record and no eventual pro career, Tuitama may have elevated the Wildcats as well as Tebow or Manziel did their programs. You just need to look at it from the perspective of where those programs were relative to the bottom of the Pac-12 position Arizona sat in for a number of years.
With that said, I’ve had the unique opportunity to be around the UA football program for nearly 15 years. That has spanned three coaching staffs, from Mike Stoops to Rich Rodriguez to Kevin Sumlin. Each recruiting staff has had its strengths and weaknesses, though in fairness to Sumlin his operation is just getting started.
Based on my experiences and evaluation of recruiting over the last couple decades, I have developed the belief that these are the most important areas to recruit:
1. Arizona (keep the best talent home when possible)
2. California and Texas (Arizona is right in the middle of the two)
3. Hawai’i and the Islands (UA football has a strong Polynesian history)
4. Nationally in recruiting strongholds for the position coaches
5. Above all, find a football player (not just a good athlete)
The five points above are all adapted from some of the principles of recruiting from each of the last three head coaching staffs. No. 1 is a no-brainer. Establishing relationships with the high school programs in this state is important. It takes far less time and money to go visit schools in Tucson or Phoenix than it does to hop on a plane to Los Angeles or Houston. It is also easier for student-athletes from in-state schools to visit frequently throughout the year, especially for games.
The second concept was really developed by Mike and Mark Stoops, who brought with them strong connections in Texas, especially Texas. The talent-rich state is full of 100s of prospects each year, and often lower-ranked prospects were only a year or two of physical development away from becoming four-star players. That can come from playing at smaller schools or perhaps being overshadowed by bigger names on their own team. Either way, getting into Texas was critical and it paid off for Stoops. Arizona offered a two-hour flight for friends and family to come visit, and the adjustment to living in the desert southwest was actually pretty easy for most of the players. The Wildcats even took the steps to schedule a two-for-one series against UTSA and later scheduled a series with UTEP.
At the same time, Stoops understood there was too much talent and too many ties to California for the program to ignore those connections. Because of conference expansion, Arizona isn’t playing in California twice a year every year like it used to, but at least once the Wildcats are playing UCLA or USC in Los Angeles. Most locations in California are an easy two-hour flight to get over to Tucson, and the talent across the board is better than the pool in Arizona.
The third recruiting base the Wildcats must tap into is the Polynesian pipeline. Dick Tomey established this connection decades ago and dozens of players have come to the desert and thrived in the environment. The Stoops staff kept this going pretty well, but it was mostly ignored by Rodriguez’s staff, unfortunately. Sumlin & Co. are not shy to mend this relationship, which was evident when Iona Uiagalelei was hired as the defensive line coach. The successful recruitment of linebacker/end Eddie Siamau, who very well could play as a true freshman, is the first of hopefully numerous Polynesian players that the Wildcats will recruit in the coming years.
Next, it would be pointless to waste connections that coaches have in different areas of the country. Rodriguez’s staff did a nice job pulling in players from Louisiana and Florida, which are not often thought of as Pac-12 recruiting hot beds. But when you can pull in a player from other regions, it not only diversifies your roster, but perhaps opens the door to recruit an even better talent from the area down the road. I thought former offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh (Stoops’ staff) did a very solid job going into places where he knew he could find offensive linemen (like Fabbians Ebbele out of Chicago). I see someone like Kyle DeVan in the current offensive line role doing the exact same thing. So yes, it’s important to recruit specific areas paramount to the long term success (Arizona, Texas, California, the Islands), but coaches also need to be able to get the best talent for their positions and if they can get that in other areas, that is what they have to do.
Lastly, the end of the day evaluation between any two similar prospects should be: to which one is football more important? I attribute this to a mantra Rodriguez often preached. He did not want players that liked football, he wanted players that loved football. And that is important. I have seen too many players that look the part, but ultimately they get on campus and they aren’t willing to put in the work necessary to be an elite football player. To steal the SEC motto, it just means more to some players.
Interestingly, this often holds true for the Polynesians and players from Texas where football can be its own religion. I don’t mean to suggest every single one fits that mold or that no players from California or Arizona or elsewhere don’t love playing football. It’s simply an attribute more common to some areas than others.
So where is recruiting under Sumlin? Well, it’s just getting started.
From a philosophical standout, I believe Sumlin’s staff checks off most of the five recruiting keys I have listed above. But I also believe this staff is taking it a step further in terms of who they target. If a recruiting class has 25 available spots, this staff isn’t just going to sign the 25 best players it can or throw together a class and fill it out to meet the total 25 available slots by signing day. Instead, they have a very specific physical profile in mind for each position and have a quota to fill at each position. This ties into a concept I neglected to detail above because it’s not only tied to recruiting, but also the current team.
Roster management is what sets the priority in recruiting targets, both for specific players and specific positions. Who do we have, what do we need, how do we get it? This is constantly the question a staff has to ask itself as players within a program improve, regress, get hurt, transfer, retire or graduate. This is why recruiting doesn’t stop.
Sumlin & Co. spent their first season in Tucson focused on this roster management. That was the most critical part of the recruiting process for them in Year 1. When they arrived in Spring 2018, the roster they inherited was going to change three months later, six months later and certainly 12 months later when a full class of players exhausted eligibility. How could a coaching staff have a specific recruiting plan without knowing what the roster was going to look like? It wasn’t always a clear or quick learning curve, but by the end of the 2018 season the staff had a good understanding of the roster and was able to fully hit the road with a recruiting plan in January 2019.
This is not to say the staff was unable to recruit at all in 2018, but they were not operating at full strength or understanding. They did a very good job in a short amount of time using their existing relationships and pairing it with the UA football brand to sign a very well-balanced class. I think it’s the third straight class that has noticeably improved the talent over the previous class here at Arizona, but time will tell.
The final component to recruiting comes down to facilities and personnel. Arizona is updgraded significantly in both of these areas. Credit should be given to Greg Byrne and his administration for launching a series of essential facility upgrades. Dave Heeke and his staff have continued that the last two years, and Heeke has taken it a step further by providing Sumlin additional support in recruiting personnel.
First and foremost, the Wildcats now have facilities to showcase. The Lowell-Stevens Football Facility was a vital upgrade in 2013. The completion of the Davis Sports Center this past spring is a second significant asset, plus the east side/Zona Zoo renovations last fall were needed. Next will be the plans for the West side stadium renovation in the coming seasons. When complete, that will be 10 years of dedicated commitment from Athletic department leadership and donors. That is unheard of in this program’s history.
Second, Arizona Athletics has provided the football staff more resources to recruit. At the end of the Rodriguez era, the Wildcats basically had one dedicated staffer to organizing recruiting efforts. Indeed, it was a team effort for Rodriguez and Co. with plenty of other staffers contributing to the efforts, but there was only one position, in title, committed to recruiting.
Since Sumlin arrived, two additional positions have been created centered around recruiting operations, plus a digital media position was created. These are assets that have never existed and they are men and women who 24 hours, seven days a week and 365 days a year are committed to the Arizona football recruiting operation. This streamlines evaluation, travel coordination and official/unofficial visit logistics like never before. There is also a player development position waiting to be hired and added to the staff, too (update: former Wildcat Syndric Steptoe was hired to this position on Aug. 12).
These are tremendously positive developments for Arizona, but the top competition in the Pac-12 and other Power 5 leagues have two or three times the amount of dedicated resources. This is reality in major college football in 2019, and it is why a program like Arizona has a major uphill battle ahead.
There is not going to be a sudden surge with a 20-player class of four and five stars. There is not going to be a quarterback show up on campus and single-handedly take the Wildcats to a Pac-12 Championship game. It is going to take careful and strategic targeting of recruits that fit on and off the field and it is going to take significant player development to establish Arizona as a consistent contender in the Pac-12.
I believe that is where this staff is excelling. Sumlin did not take shortcuts when he arrived in January 2018, so anyone that was looking for an immediate change to the recruiting landscape may be disappointed. That is understandable. But the talent is improving and the roster is stabilizing. Let’s check back in two or three years to fully evaluate this staff’s recruiting.
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