It's currently a list with 250 names on it, 250 high school football players who've been targeted by the PSU football coaching staff as potential recruits for the 2009 Viking squad.
That list is the result of thousands of miles of travel by PSU coaches to watch prospects play and hundreds of hours on the phone and in the video room. It will be further culled to the coaches' top 100 prospects, which requires more hours of watching film and discussion.
It's an ever-changing list, though, as “we never know when something else, someone who is better than our current candidates, will come to our attention,” said Jim Craft, recruiting coordinator and offensive line coach in his 8th year on the PSU coaching staff, following a standout career as a tight end for the Vikings.
Over the last few weeks, Craft, along with many of his colleagues?including Head Coach Jerry Glanville and Offensive Coordinator Darrell “Mouse” Davis?have been glued to the team's video equipment, reducing the group of perhaps 1,000 players the staff has evaluated this spring.
Coaches are assigned areas of geographical responsibility where it's their job to find the top five high school prospects at each position for PSU's master list. This year, the program concentrated its efforts in Oregon, Washington, California, Texas, Hawai'i and a little bit in Arizona and Georgia.
This year's list of 250 potential players is somewhat larger than in the past because the arrival of Coach Glanville has broadened the team's recruiting area.
“Coach Glanville has a lot of contacts in Texas, so we had three coaches there this year for the first time, and I think you could add Arizona and even Georgia to that list because we keep finding kids who'd like to play for him,” said Craft.
Because the schemes instituted by Glanville and Davis are a little more demanding---“more one-on-one stuff that's demanding and fun to play”?PSU's program also is getting interest from a little higher level athlete overall than it might have in the past, Craft said.
Of the 250 currently being evaluated, only eight appeared to have definitely chosen to play for a larger or higher level program. And, by this time, all will know that they've caught someone's eye at PSU.
“There are a lot of people who would like to consider playing for Coach Glanville and Coach Davis. We won't get them all and we still pick our battles when we're going to go head-to-head with a Bowl Division program. We try to go after kids who we think might have a reason to want to play here...maybe they have a relative here, or they would prefer to play in a metropolitan area, or maybe we have a strong academic program in their area of interest,” said Craft.
Academics are always a factor in recruiting for football, according to Craft. PSU's academic program compares favorably with the rest of the Big Sky Conference, he said. “We have some very strong academic programs. There's also a lot going on here...there's the Stott Center football locker room renovation, all the new campus housing, the light rail line is being extended around us. Portland is growing and the downtown area is vibrant. There's a lot of positive stuff.”
About 75 percent of PSU recruited football players will eventually graduate, he added. And that compares very favorably with the overall PSU student population, which has been considered a little more mature and serious about academics.
Tips about athletes come from a number of sources. PSU coaches build relationships with high school coaches in their geographic areas. About 20 percent come from highlight film shipped to a number of college programs by high school coaches. Others might come from information developed by scouting services that keep tabs on promising high school football players. And another group comes tangentially, the result of research on a different player.
“We might have been interested in a running back from, say, Los Gatos last year and noticed when we watched the film that there was a good interior lineman we also wanted to see,” Craft said.
Each high school program “only has one or two Division One prospects so their high school coaches want to point them toward programs where they know they'll be well treated and well recruited, meaning that we'll spend time with them, evaluate them, call them and try not to jerk them around,” Craft added.
In late April and May, coaches can leave the office to recruit. If they've identified players and have film, they watch the film that has come in, said Craft. “If we don't have film, we get it. No one makes the list without being evaluated on film, which is much easier today with the current state of internet video.”
The top three players at each position will be offered scholarships on a first-come-first-served basis probably sometime in December. And that time works to a program's advantage (as mentioned earlier) because the list continues to evolve as new players come to the coaches' attention.
While most of their time is focused on recruiting scholarship athletes, Craft said a lot of attention also is paid to the team's crop of future potential walk-ons.
“The NCAA only allows us the equivalent of 63 scholarships at our level, but we can expand the number of players to 95. Our walk-ons are carefully vetted. We only let someone walk on who we think eventually could earn a scholarship if the right conditions arise,” Craft said.
As an example, he pointed to strong safety Micheal Dorsey, a Rex Putnam High School graduate, who was part of the 2003 walk-on class. Dorsey, who will enter the PSU graduate school of business next fall in search of a degree in International Management, earned a scholarship during his career and was one of the team's outstanding defensive players last season.
After an intense June and early July, the PSU football coaching staff will take a little time off. “But, we want to be able to send out letters in August and September. The process never ends. As soon as we sign next year's recruiting class in February, we'll start the following week on the next one.”
