MORE: Rivals Ranking Week - Class of 2019 Southeastern states' storylines | History of Big Ten first-year coaches
This season, there are arguably more new head coaches at high-profile football schools than ever before. The 2017 season ended with 13 Power Five programs hiring new coaches, including several marquee names in the sport – Florida State, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, UCLA, Texas A&M and more – adding even further intrigue heading into this season.
With that in mind, Rivals.com took a closer look at how head coaches around the country began their tenures on the recruiting trail. Today, the SEC is under the microscope.
NOTE: Arkansas' Chad Morris, Florida's Dan Mullen, Mississippi State's Joe Moorhead, Ole Miss' Matt Luke, Tennessee's Jeremy Pruitt and Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher were not included in this study because they have yet to complete their first recruiting cycle as head coach at their schools. Year 1 represents a coach's first full recruiting cycle as head coach at that school.
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Observations: There is so much that goes into when a prospect commits and when coaches push for more commitments and, on top of that, the standards vary per school. In the first three-month period of the recruiting calendar there are NCAA-mandated quiet and evaluation periods as well as spring practices and spring games across the country. The quiet period means coaches can't have off-campus contact with prospects so, outside of getting players players to visit campus, they have to lean on relationship building to help endear themselves to prospects.
As the data illustrates, Alabama's Nick Saban, Georgia's Kirby Smary, South Carolina's Will Muschamp and LSU's Ed Orgeron excelled in this area, picking up more than 20-percent of their first full recruiting class' commitments within the first three months of the recruiting cycle.
The second three-month period of the recruiting cycle contains mostly major summer camps before the NCAA dead period, which covers almost the entire month of August and most of July. During the dead period, coaches cannot see players on or off campus but they are still allow to communicate with them. A significant portion of these coaches built their first recruiting classes during this time. Specifically, Mark Stoops used this time to get more than half of the commitments in his first class at Kentucky. On the flip side, Saban and Smart picked up less than 20-percent of their first recruiting classes.
These coaches weren't very active in terms of pulling in commitments during the season, the third three-month period of the recruiting calendar, but all but two of them were very busy in the last three-month period of the recruiting calendar, getting least 30-percent of their first full recruiting class' commitments during that time. That last period is when most uncommitted prospect end up taking official visits and coaches are allowed to conduct in-home visits.
Farrell's take for new coaches: The SEC is known for late closing pushes when it comes to recruiting, so the fact that teams like Texas A&M and Ole Miss have so many early commitments is a bit of a surprise, but certainly part of the strategy of the head coaches. Florida and others appear to have a ton of room to close strong but that may not always be a good thing, especially for the Gators, who should be doing a much better job under Dan Mullen.
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Observations: The Southeast is the most talented region of the country, but some of these states, like Kentucky and Missouri, produce very few major prospects so Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops and Tigers head coach Barry Odom are forced to prioritize out-of-state prospects. Auburn's Gus Malzahn has gotten some major in-state commitments during his tenure as head coach but he never hit 10 in-state commitments in his first two recruiting classes.
Former Florida head coach Jim McElwain and Georgia's Kirby Smart are the only two coaches that had more in-state commitments than out-of-state commitments over their first two recruiting classes and that makes sense considering Florida and Georgia are two of the four most talent-rich states in the country.
Ed Orgeron did a great job of landing a lot of in-state prospects in his first year at LSU and there is still time left in his second recruiting cycle to get a few more in-state commitments. Nick Saban's first class at Alabama was ridiculously good by any standard and he certainly did a good job of getting in-state commitments.
Farrell's take for new coaches: While teams like Florida and Texas A&M might not have to rely on out-of-state recruiting as much, teams like Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Arkansas must make it a priority. Tennessee is especially interesting here under Jeremy Pruitt, who has been very selective when it comes to in-state prospects. Tennessee's in-state prospects are particularly interesting as that state is growing as fast any any other when it comes to elite talent.
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Observations: Five of the nine SEC coaches in this study experienced a minimal change in their recruiting class rank from year one to year two. The results from Saban, Malzahn and Smart here are particularly impressive because Alabama had the No. 1 class in Saban's first and second year, Auburn's class stayed in the top 10 from year one to year two under Malzahn and Georgia's class ascended from No. 3 to No. 1 from year one to year two with Smart as head coach.
Missouri is the only school that saw a significant move up in the rankings from year one to year two under Odom. He took the Tigers from No. 49 in the team rankings in his first year to No. 39 in his second year. Stoops had Kentucky in the top 20 of the team rankings in his first year but they fell to No. 35 in year two. Vanderbilt saw a similar drop from year one to year two of the Derek Mason era. LSU had a top 15 class in Orgeron's first year and right now he has the Tigers in the top 10 with 19 commitments in hand.
Farrell's take for new coaches: The bar is being set very high for teams like Texas A&M, Arkansas and Ole Miss while programs like Florida and others should see gains in year two. I love Fisher as a recruiter but I'm not sure how he out-recruits 2018 next year as he's doing so well. Luke is doing a great job as is Chad Morris, while Mullen is falling short of expectations.
