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FRISCO, Texas – TCU head coach Gary Patterson was hot about expanding the recruiting calendar last year, and on the first of this year’s Big 12 Media Days, he was as fired up as he was back when the changes were only announced.
From his perspective, all the things that he feared would happen have come true. Added official visit dates for rising seniors in the spring and summer in addition to the Early Signing Period in December come at a cost. His most significant gripe was the added dates on the clock have subtracted from the dates he and his staff have had off of it.
“Last year, I got six weekends where I got a Saturday and a Sunday off together. Up to coming into this July, I’ve had one,” he said. “We’ve had camps and we’ve had recruiting events every weekend because of official visits, so it’s worse than it’s ever been.
“I think you’re going to have burned-out college coaches and if we don’t decide to do something different, you’re going to have guys getting out of the profession,” he added. “We’re doing well in recruiting because we’re working hard, but the bottom line is that my coaches are burned-out.”
TCU does have a sub-top 25 recruiting class nationally, and currently sits third in the conference behind the usual suspects in Oklahoma and Texas. That provides little solace for Patterson, who fears that the new nature of the beast forces his staff to now spend more time on personnel not with his program than those that are.
“One of the things that’s happening is we’re not worried about our own football team,” he said. “At some point in time, you’ve got to coach the guys and get ready with your own team. I’m talking about your full-time guys, not your strength guys, your academic people, we’ve got to get back to us.
“I don’t know what the solution is. Right now, I’m passed the solution stage. I am just focused on how many out of 12 games I can win.”
Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell walked on both sides of the line a bit, echoing some of the concerns brought up by Patterson, but also looking for more of the silver lining. The biggest commonality between the two was the appropriate amount and timing of a ‘dead period’ – when coaches are not allowed to have direct contact with recruits.
Patterson mentioned the notion of creating such a time immediately following National Signing Day in February. Campbell was less specific but seemed to be of the same opinion.
“You’re probably talking to the young guy in this thing that doesn’t mind ‘new’ in recruiting,” Campbell said. “I think that young guys are making decision that we can get them on our campus faster is certainly a positive, I do think that we have to be wary about how much we’re asking of our coaches – making sure there is enough dead period in there that we’re not going to burn our coaches out, but a year into this now, I see this as a real positive.
“Now, what’s the fallout? Until we get to December, it’ll be tough to see what the real fallout of that schedule looks like.”
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby acknowledged the frustration of the conference coaches, but one year ago floated the concept of moving the early signing period to August, rather than December. He wasn’t quite so ambitious in talking about such changes this year, but continued support the adjustments added to the current calendar.
“Coaches were not wildly enthusiastic about it,” he said. “They also were not wildly enthusiastic about the April, May and June visits, but the student-athletes and their parents are pleased with it and that might change over time.
“The football oversight committee is looking at the recruiting calendar and how it all fits together,” he added. “It’s been decades since we’ve had a full and robust discussion of what the recruiting calendar ought to look like and I think over the next year that will be a high priority. Whether it changes dramatically or not is yet to be determined.”
Patterson was as robust as it got on Monday and didn’t seem as concerned with accommodating the parents and recruits at the toll he’s seen it take within his program.
“We have to answer the questions and fix what we need and not what we want,” he said. “We’re too much into this what do the student athletes want? No, it’s what do they need. Anything we do, we need to ask 'Do we need this? Or is this what we want?' When we get to that point, we’re going to be a little bit better, because that means we used a little common sense.”
