signstravaganza 2015

Between scaling back from a daily schedule, and the lackluster results out of the football team lately (and by extension, the recruiting class**), I'd forgive you if you thought you weren't getting this regular feature this year.  But you shall have it anyway.

That Mike London is able to put together a class at all is still something of a testament to his recruiting chops.  Rarely does a coach occupy a seat this hot for this long.  Who knows how 2016 will pan out?  Not well, is the likely answer, but there's always hope delusions.  UVA also got a shot of adrenaline at the end of the cycle by finally hiring the long-wished-for Chris Beatty, who brought a few friends with him.

This post, as ever, is comprised of standard features, so let's get at them after the asterisked disclaimer.

**This paragraph will serve as my plea for forgiveness.  Objective evaluation and unfiltered opinions have always been a goal of this blog.  Both are unreachable ideals, but worth striving for.  One thing that makes them unreachable is that it's a dick move to talk way down about the worth of a bunch of not-even-graduated high school kids who've just taken a big step toward living out their hopes and dreams.  At the same time, I couldn't ask anyone to take me seriously if every recruiting evaluation said, "yay team!"  I'll just have to risk giving offense - judiciously, though.

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ROSTER MANAGEMENT

This class was always going to be large; the initial assessment was that the only limit was the yearly limit of 25, or London's hot seat, or the coaches' imagination in figuring out how to stuff as many players as possible in the class.  They didn't quite get to 25; the final tally is 23, with two of them enrolling early.  It's unfortunate they couldn't.  The roster now has 85 scholarship players on it, meaning if there's any attrition at all (so, for example, if George Adeosun's knee is healed by Jesus), UVA will go into the next season undermanned.  Attrition is probably not done for the offseason, and even if not, the roster lists a few players who could've been turned down for a fifth season with no reservations.  Room definitely existed underneath the roster limits for another player or three.

There'll be only 15 graduating seniors after the upcoming season, which is a blessing - it means that if a new coach is in the office by next New Year's Day, he won't have to flail around just to keep his head above water in the numbers game.

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POSITIONAL BREAKDOWN

Quarterback - Nick Johns

Early assessment: "I won't be surprised if the coaches take one. I won't be surprised if they don't."  (From the big-picture post last March, linked above.)

They took one, and no complaints here at all because we'll carry five next year and that's about the ideal number to have.  (We'll definitely get deeper into the right number of players to have at a position, later on.)  The coaches zeroed in on their target very early in the game and landed him only a little bit later, and by most accounts he's a worthy candidate to start at a P5 school.  It's taken a long while, but I think it's fair to say the coaches are finally steadying up the quarterback position.  Either London has learned some lessons, or Steve Fairchild is providing valuable advice, or both.

Running back - Chris Sharp, Olamide Zacchaeus

Early assessment: "Two backs in the 2015 class would be a very sound investment."

So far, so good.  Neither of these two backs come with major-league credentials, but there's some good diversity of skills here - these two should complement each other well - and this position continues to be staffed at just the right levels.  Tailback is one of the most likely places to find quality sleepers, so I tend to lean optimistic on the position in almost all cases, as long as the depth is there and they're not all the same style of back.  I like how this looks going forward.

Wide receiver - Warren Craft, David Eldridge, Myles Robinson

Early assessment: "Let's say anywhere from 3-5 as a possibility. I'd prefer three or four..."

Hard to say I didn't get my wish here.  Perhaps my wish was a little overwrought; UVA tends to list three receivers as starters, and this is one position where you don't need to go more than three deep.  But we'll be going four deep this year, with 12 receivers on the roster.  (Assuming this is where Robinson slots - he's more the kind of undefined "athlete" that London loves to fill the team with, and could be a cornerback.)

UNC transfer T.J. Thorpe isn't listed here, because he's not technically in the recruiting class, but he'll be on the roster all the same.  Thorpe is also the best chance among the newcomers to add some electric flash to the 2015 outfit.  The signees were rated pretty low, without standout athleticism to make the raters look twice.

Add Dominique Terrell back to the list - he's a newcomer in a way, as last year's big-picture assessment assumed he'd be graduated by now - and you get the five receivers that I said would be too many.  On the plus side, it's not five all at once, which would've been a big mistake.  Three each in four different classes, until and unless this group of three gets broken up by putting one of them on the field.  That shouldn't happen, though.

Tight end - Richard Burney, Tanner Cowley

Early assessment: "It's a safe bet we'll take at least one, maybe two."

That was assuming Mario Nixon might ever be available to play, which he almost certainly won't.  Given that, two tight ends was an absolute necessity for this class, lest the position become uselessly thin.  Burney and Cowley aren't the least bit flashy (they're tight ends, what do you expect?) but they fill a huge need.

Offensive line - Ryan Bischoff, Grant Polk, R.J. Proctor

Early assessment: "Need-wise, the barest of bare-bones minimums here should be four. That's still not enough....I'll settle for five in the class - the undermanning of the depth chart just isn't going to be fixed in one year."

You're shitting me.

You've got to be shitting me.

Start this breakdown by reading the O-line section of last year's Signstravaganza, where UVA took two linemen.  Every word of it still applies.

The depth chart I have lists 17 offensive linemen.  That'd be enough to keep me happy, if George Adeosun didn't have an evil spirit residing his knee; if Jack English weren't desperation-moved to left tackle where he lined up as a 260-pound blindside protector; if Jay Whitmire's back doesn't have any more setbacks ever; if Jackson Matteo were actually on scholarship, if, if, if, if, if.

I thought we had four, but the coaches decided to move Eli Hanback to defensive tackle.  Granted, defensive tackle is also a thin position in need of a major shore-up, but this would've been much better accomplished by recruiting defensive tackles.  So now, we have taken five linemen in two years.

This is so far beyond stupid.  This is into blithering, drooling moron territory.  Simple math - 85 scholarships divided by 22 positions on the field - reveals you should start with 3.4 players per position, as a base assumption.  Five starting offensive linemen times 3.4 equals 17.  You should have 17.  The hell we have 17.  We can't even go three deep without counting walk-ons, ex-tight-ends, and injured guys.

London's philosophy - which you can even hear him state, if you watch the David Eldridge short video on the official site - is that you build a football team with guys who can run.  So he loads up on "athletes", thinking he's being so clever and Oregon-esque, forgetting that Oregon has taken a minimum of four O-linemen nearly every year (only one exception, in fact) going back since long before they were Oregon.

Like it's some big frickin' mystery the run game has failed to reach the top 90 each of the last three seasons, and has only gotten worse the more London's O-line recruits and philosophy permeate the roster.  London is screwing not only himself, but the next guy too.  At the position most heavily affected by injuries and unpredictable player development, London is committing felony negligence.

And by the way, this is not an attack on the actual signees, about whom the only complaint I have is that there aren't enough of them.

Defensive tackle - Eli Hanback, James Trucilla

Early assessment: "Signing at least one is a must...I'd rather see two and wouldn't exactly mind three."

London got to the requisite two by mugging Peter to pay Paul.  Hanback comes in as a complete unknown, because all his evaluations were as an offensive lineman.  Trucilla is an undersized but quick-twitchy three-tech with mostly MAC offers.  This will give UVA six defensive tackles, which I'd complain about except that Jon Tenuta usually has the team in a nickel defense and doesn't usually have two DTs on the field.  The position is probably at about the right depth.  I just wish it would come at the expense of the WR depth instead of the O-line.

Defensive end - Naji Abdullah, Gladimir Paul, Steven Wright

Early assessment: "I'd say 2-3 is the target, but Jon Tenuta's philosophy might muddy up the numbers a little."

One phrase you hear a lot of now is "in the mold of Max Valles."  Valles set the standard, more or less, for the pass-rushing linebacker that Tenuta wants, and yes, this is the defensive end section but the distinction now between DE and SLB is much less than on traditional defenses.  In this case, UVA has brought in one more traditional DE (Wright) and two "athlete" types.  This to go along with the several more "athlete" types signed in the past year or two.  There's probably an overdone glut at this point.

Abdullah and Wright are late, January additions to the class, as the DE position had to be remade pretty quickly after a couple unsurprising decommitments.  I don't think the losses of Brandon Wilson and Rasool Clemons were at all unforeseen by London and the staff, and they weren't slow in replacing them.

Linebacker - Eric Gallon, Dominic Sheppard, Jahvoni Simmons, C.J. Stalker

Early assessment: "This class does have to include, however, at least one prototype middle linebacker....I'd say a class of 2-4 would be in range, with three as the probable sweet spot."

You'll note the general lack of star power in this class.  Of the 23 recruits, 15 are low-three-stars or less in Rivals's system.  Only five are high-three-stars or higher.  And of those five, three are linebackers.  Looking only at this position, you'd think this was a top-15 class in the country.

Gallon is another late addition, and yes, London dropped the Max Valles comparison in his recruiting short.  The other three are regular linebackers all the way, and all of them highly, highly sought-after.  UVA probably would've been content with just Simmons and Stalker as their WLB and MLB candidates, but Chris Beatty brought some Signing Day excitement with him in the form of Sheppard, who is one of two former Wisconsin commits in the class.  Sheppard was loaded down with an offer list that looked more like one for a high-four-star guy than a unanimous three-star.  (I don't think they're all real, though.  I think in terms of where he actually could have committed, his list is a little more modest.)

The numbers for the position are a little fat - 11 scholarship players - but such an infusion of talent as this nullifies any complaint.

Defensive back - Kareem Gibson, T.J. Griffin, Juan Thornhill

Early assessment: "One more DB besides Thornhill is all I want, but in the business of predicting, 3-4 total seems like a more likely bet."

Amazingly, left to his own devices, London would've given us exactly that - one more DB besides Thornhill, unless Myles Robinson ends up at corner.  Griffin is another Beatty import, as well as a high school teammate of Jahvoni Simmons.  I don't mind too much about what that does to the numbers; seven cornerbacks is perfectly fine, as it's 3.5 deep, and it's misleading to think of having only two starting cornerbacks anyway given the proliferation of nickel packages.  You need three good ones.  Thornhill makes a good addition to the safety corps, which is carrying six players - also fine.  London used to be kind of drunk on defensive backs, but the position has been right-sized in recent years and smartly he didn't get excessive this year.

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Made-up traditions are a staple of Signstravaganza, and the usual array of lists is important as ever.

Top five stories of the year:

1. Linebackers.  I cannot help but be impressed at the haul.  Even more astounding is the difference between the star power at this position and the lack thereof everywhere else.

2. Chris Beatty.  Even bowl-less teams can have fun Signing Day surprises, and UVA made it happen by poaching Wisconsin's ace recruiter and then flipping two Badger commitments, one on Tuesday and one on the big day.  These had been rumored to be in the works, so not totally out of the blue, but still enjoyable.

3. Decommitments.  A record for the London era with four.  Two were mainly academic-related.  Rasool Clemons was always a longshot to qualify and the coaches had the unpleasant duty of flat-out telling Kareem McDonald he wasn't going to get in, either.  Two others outright decided to leave.  One had never visited UVA, the other left for a home-state school that was performing a hell of a lot better on the field.  These things happen, it's true - but you also have to wonder if the coaches, out of necessity, had been taking a few more moonshots with guys who were more borderline in the classroom than their targets of years past.

4. Offensive line.  Come on, man.

5. Low ratings and less competition.  Competition in the form of offers, that is.  As much as it's worth being reminded that star ratings don't always mean everything and there are lots of examples of star players who the scouting services had panned, it's also worth being reminded that they do tend to be pretty good predictors of future prowess.  Far from fighting and beating some of the big boys the way London did in 2011, or bringing in some huge headliners like in 2014, the class has only one player in anyone's Top Whatever list (Jahvoni Simmons) and a huge pile of guys who'd be called fliers in past recruiting classes.  In 24/7's composite list, Simmons comes in 150th in the country; the next-best guy is C.J. Stalker at 510th.

Five most likely to play as true freshmen:

1. C.J. Stalker
2. Jahvoni Simmons
3. Richard Burney
4. Chris Sharp
5. Tanner Cowley

All of these guys play positions - LB, TE, RB, that took huge hits from graduation and left behind a depth chart of entirely unproven players.  Henry Coley and Daquan Romero sucked up almost every snap on defense, leaving a vacuum at MLB and WLB.  Only Taquan Mizzell has any experience at RB, and TE is even thinner where Rob Burns is the only one to have made an appearance in a game.  Plus, Stalker is an early enrollee.

Five I'm most excited about:

1. C.J. Stalker
2. Jahvoni Simmons
3. Dominic Sheppard
4. Nick Johns
5. Olamide Zacchaeus

Linebackers linebackers linebackers.  I loved watching Coley and Romero, and the incoming group has a real chance to be worthy successors.  And I rarely let this list go without putting an RB on it somewhere.  Zacchaeus has some elusivity to him that gives him a large fun-to-watch potential.

Three sleepers:

1. Warren Craft
2. R.J. Proctor
3. Chris Sharp

To be on this list, you have to have been given the two-star of doom from at least one service, and man were there a lot of choices this year - ten, to be exact.  Craft is funny because Rivals and Scout think he's two-star material, and ESPN gave him four, with a glowing scout's take.  He's tall and athletic, and just as a fun bonus was once committed to VT on a basketball scholarship.  Proctor is a boom-or-bust prospect as a lineman, with really long arms and a huge frame.  Sharp was a very productive workhorse back in high school - not Kevin Parks level stuff, but he piled up yard all the same.

Five highest-rated:

1. Jahvoni Simmons
2. C.J. Stalker
3. Nick Johns
4. Juan Thornhill
5. Dominic Sheppard

Once based on star averages, but there's too much homogeneity here - lots of across-the-board three-stars.  So it's now based on 24/7's composite, except that I can't figure out how the hell their composite put Steven Wright above Sheppard when Sheppard rates higher on all but one system, so Sheppard it is.

Eat it, Shaney:

Jahvoni Simmons

Eat it, Randy:

Nick Johns
Dominic Sheppard

Eat it, Larry:

Jahvoni Simmons
Steven Wright.

The list of our recruits who spurned our friends in Blacksburg, College Park, and Chapel Hill, respectively.  No, I don't think we want to know how this looks the other way around.  This list, by the way, was huge in 2011.  Huge.

The ones that got away:

RB Jaason Lewis (Arizona State)
TE Chris Clark (UCLA)
OL Austin Clark (Virginia Tech)
OL Blake Camper (South Carolina)
OL Justin Skule (Vanderbilt)
LB Ricky DeBerry (Oklahoma)
DT Tim Settle (Virginia Tech)

Players who, at least at one point, looked like they had a realistic chance of ending up at UVA, and whose addition to the class would've made it noticeably better.  Settle, I had to debate on, because his transcript is going to take a couple years to sort out.  Chris Clark seemed to be really into UVA initially and likely would've given a longer look if our on-field results merited it.  Lewis was recruited by London for a long time, but overcoming his desire to go out-of-state was too big of a hurdle.

That'll do it for now.  Had there been such a thing as Signstravaganza 2008, I'd love to go back and compare.  That's the class that this one most resembles.  This one's larger, but the distribution of star-ratings is eerily similar.  That class produced a few really good players, even some NFLers, but the vast majority of it busted out and the top end was for the most part a major disappointment.  The stakes are higher for this class because it's that much bigger - it can't afford to have almost two-thirds of it be a complete waste like '08 was.

recruiting reform

Basketball is settling into a calm-before-the-storm stretch of the season, with four of the ACC's worst teams on the slate before a three-game Season-Defining Stretch that's looking more like a tough four-game run when you tack on a trip to Raleigh to the end of it.  Efficiently grinding a couple bad teams into the floor is fun in its own not-stressful way, but it makes for a minimum of writeable moments.  Instead, I think I'll react to some of the news trickling out of the NCAA's decision-making echelons.

Specifically, the fact that a football early signing period appears to be all but done at this point.  This "formally recommended" thing is a formality; the discussions have all taken place by now and they're almost dead certain to do it.  Stupid.  This is happening for two reasons: one, the NCAA has the creativity of earthworms and thinks it has only one tool in the box.  And two, coaches are eager to do anything they can to exert more control over the process, which is another way of saying take some control out of the hands of the recruits.

Early signing periods - championed by some because they would supposedly let recruits stop being bombarded with mail and social media messages - do a great job of taking control out of their hands instead.  A recruit would no longer be able to:

-- Switch schools because the head coach got fired

-- Switch schools because he doesn't like the new head coach

-- Switch schools because a favorite assistant landed a promotion elsewhere (Chris Beatty being the perfect example here)

-- Switch schools because a school he wanted an offer from, hired a new head coach willing to give him one

-- Switch schools because he blew up his senior year

The one saving grace is the December 16 date.  The ACC wanted August 1, which was beyond stupid.  The SEC wanted the Monday after Thanksgiving, which still doesn't help.  Most coaches who'll be fired, are fired before December 16, so at least that part of carousel season won't affect recruits.  I always go back to the story of Roy Roundtree, though.  Roundtree spent a year openly pining for an offer from Michigan and not getting one.  He committed to Purdue when it looked like he'd never get the Michigan offer.  When Lloyd Carr retired and Rich Rodriguez was hired, Rodriguez decided that Roundtree was a terrific fit in his offense and flipped Roundtree in February.  Roundtree would never have gotten his dream-school offer if an early signing period had existed.

Oh, I suppose you could say that Roundtree shouldn't sign early, then.  Human beings at that age have brain chemistry that prevents them foreseeing that driving 110 miles an hour is going to end with their car wrapped around a tree, but they should foresee that a coach will retire and the new one will give them an offer.  Right.  Here is the conversation that every football coach will have with all their committed players: "Sign early or you're not committed and we'll recruit around you."  It's that control thing.  No recruit is going to risk their spot in the class by not signing early - and thus, as in basketball, the "early signing period" will become "the signing period."  How much football recruiting goes on between December and February?  Tons.  How much basketball recruiting goes on between the early period and the regular period?  Zip.

Let's say you need to mount a picture to your wall with a couple screws.  That represents the problem of recruiting reform.  The NCAA has decided to use a baseball bat to pound the screws in.  Good choice of tool.  Maybe the picture can cover up the huge new holes in the drywall.  I have some better ideas.  All of them should be implemented yesterday.

Letters of intent

Ah, the LOI.  Occasionally maligned, and not without reason: the LOI binds the player to the school, but is much less binding on the school itself.  As Les Miles has proven, you can sign an LOI and still show up on campus in the fall and be told you're not on the team right now because oops we oversigned.  (Asshole.)  You'll need to move out of that dorm room.  See you in January.

There need to be some fixes to this thing, first and foremost.  It's a contract, basically, and it doesn't always work.

-- Fortunately, the Power 5 conferences have just passed mandatory four-year scholarships.  Signing the LOI in February should also require that those scholarships begin in the school's next academic semester.

-- And since we're going to be stuck with this early signing period, there should also be some changes to the early-signed LOIs: specifically, the recruit should get to specify an assistant coach, who, along with the head coach, is required to still be employed by the school on the regular NLOI day.  If either leave or are fired, the LOI is dissolved and the player has the option to look around.  He can, of course, stick with it and sign the regular LOI in February.

I'd offer some fixes that help the schools, too, but they're not necessary - the LOI is so airtight and binding on the player that there's a real good reason the coaches are drooling at the idea of getting their recruits tied up with them as early as possible.

Centralize the process

One supposed advantage of an early signing period is it would save recruits the hassle of dealing with a flood of communication when they're already committed.  Well, for a month and a half, I guess, with this solution.  But this is exactly what I mean by using a baseball bat to pound a nail.  Sure, if a recruit knows where he's going in June and doesn't want to deal with the process after that, it makes sense for him to be able to shut it down entirely.

So set up an NCAA clearinghouse to keep track of all these verbal commitments.  Allow a recruit, starting the day the signing period ends during his junior year, to register a verbal commitment with the clearinghouse.  Doing so then means the school he's committed to can have unlimited contact with him, and other schools none at all.  No letters, no emails, no Facebook or Twitter shout-outs, nothing, unless they can show it was initiated by the recruit (which he'd be allowed to do.)  They can visit on the high school campus, and that'd be the extent of what they can do (it'd be hard to prevent contact at the high school, because there's no reason coaches shouldn't be able to recruit other players on the team.)

Illegal contact would be a secondary violation; repeated contact a major one.  The NCAA would have to rely on the player to report it, but that's fine; the idea is to prevent the player from being harassed, and if he doesn't really mind, what can you really do?  You'd have to think coaches would really like this too.  They'd have theoretical peace of mind, knowing that there isn't some annoying slimy weasel trying to get in the good graces of their recruits.

And of course, registering a verbal commitment would be totally rescindable.  By the player.  Not the school.

Written offers

The NCAA forbids written offers until after September 1 of the player's senior year.  This had the commendable goal of trying to stem the tide of earlier and earlier recruiting, but predictably was a huge failure.  The old date was August 1 of junior year.  Somewhere in the middle would be best - like, the same date mentioned above for registering a commitment.  I'm all about trying to keep recruiting out of middle school, but it's probably best not to have players not truly knowing where they stand.  Sometimes an offer isn't really an offer.

Better would be for offers to be able to be sent out February of junior year, and requiring the school to make good on them once sent.  Formalize the language so that it's the same for every school, or rather, write a special legalistic paragraph that must be included.  That paragraph would say something to the effect of this is a formal NCAA-approved offer of grant-in-aid for the period 2015 to 2019 to play football at University of Whatever contingent on you being academically eligible and not being a shithead and getting arrested bla bla bla and would mark the letter as official and binding on the school, if the player accepts.  The recruit wouldn't be allowed to formalize a commitment with the clearinghouse without this letter in hand, but schools wouldn't be able to say "well we're offering you but we want to see you at camp or we want to see how this other guy shakes out first" or whatever.

And of course, once sent, a written offer wouldn't be rescindable unless a guy got arrested or something.

Official visits

This is another thing that's passed the NCAA by while they whistle in the dark.  These can't be taken until senior year begins; ostensibly, that's again to keep recruiting from starting too soon, but the reality of the thing is that the further south a school is, the more likely they are to fight to keep the status quo.  Southern schools, SEC ones in particular, want these visits to happen while it's cold and nasty up north and nice and pleasant down south.  Should they happen while it's nice and pleasant up north and disgustingly hot and humid down south, it might be slightly detrimental to SEC hegemony.

But it makes no damn sense to force a recruit to spend all his own money during the peak recruiting season.  Official visits are generally impractical in the fall because the recruits are busy playing football on the weekends.  Duh.  So they can't happen in the summer, don't happen in the fall, and as a result many recruits never even take one.  Extremely rare is the recruit that takes his limit of five.  Small wonder Mike London likes to line everyone up in January for one big official visit extravaganza.  Besides the fact that it does wonders for convincing a few remaining uncommitted recruits, it's just plain practical - and damn near required.

Let's face it: there's no reason not to have them in the summer.  And the limits need to be changed.  Instead of limiting the recruit, limit the schools.  Let the recruit take as many as he's offered.  I'm not real worried about abuse of that system; rare would be the player who just spends every weekend all summer on official visits.  Give the schools an allotment of, oh, say, 80 or 100 to hand out, and let them spend them as they please, as long as the recruit has finished the equivalent of five semesters of high school and, again, it's after the previous signing period is over.  Let them pay for kids to come to camp weekend if they choose.  And for players who've registered their verbal commitment, one free official that doesn't count against the school's limits.

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I don't think this quite addresses everything, because recruiting is still a little rough around the edges when it comes to trying to deal with academically iffy students, and I don't have any good ideas about that.  Obviously there's also the issue of bagmen to deal with, but I think a future post may have some things to work on that.  And the one really big question is: how to keep recruiting from working its way into freshman year?  Football is a bit self-limiting there, because most coaches are pretty versed in the ways of physical development of high schoolers, and there aren't a whole lot of them that look ready to go at age 15.  But still, if there are any measures that would actually work, I'd be all about them - it's just that everything the NCAA has tried has failed and I don't have any better suggestions except to say that formalizing the process into a clear and obvious one-year cycle might help.

I do think that an early signing period will accelerate the forward-creep quite a bit.  Coaches do a lot of their head-start work in December and January when they're not coaching a team and most of their class is sewn up.  They're dealing with not just juniors, but sophomores and even the occasional freshman.  But they can't zero in on the younger kids while the seniors are still technically not locked down yet and there's still work to do on that class.  Take away all that work they have to do on the senior class and they get a lot of time freed up for future classes.  So the NCAA is really not helping itself here.

But hopefully, this is something like 90% comprehensive here.  We've imposed some order on a chaotic process - sure to be appreciated by the coaches, even if most of what we've done here is to make the process more recruit-friendly.

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This doesn't take into account anything that's happened Monday or Tuesday, because that's for next week.  But here's the latest iteration of the ACC season sims:

At this juncture, KenPom is essentially guaranteeing a #1 seed.  And leaping into the driver's seat for 2nd place: UNC, which is rounding into form somewhat at the exact same time Duke took a couple helpful losses.  Personally I'm holding off on getting too excited until after the four-game stretch of doom, and if we come out of that in good shape, then......

2015 big-picture recruiting

One of these days, a 2015 recruiting board is going to hit the streets.  Cross my heart for real.  I'm hoping you've been distracted by basketball.  For now, we need to take the annual look at the likely positional makeup of the class.

First, we establish the actual size.  The answer: big.  The senior class now sits at either 20 or 21 by my count (I'm not totally sure if Chris Brathwaite got his scholarship back, but I'm assuming he has unless I ever read otherwise.)  At that number, you're taking 25 in the class if you can, that's all there is to it - unless you take more by counting some early enrollees toward 2014.  This is a limited-only-by-imagination class, essentially.

This is actually bad news if you buy into the likelihood that this will be a transition class between coaches.  For purposes of today, we'll assume it won't be, since obviously the coaching staff is not going to recruit with that in mind.  But hold no illusions about the obstacles we have to overcome: 2-10 will have poisoned the well for a lot of recruits, who simply won't bother returning any phone calls with a 434 area code.  Most of the key assistants are in the second year of a two-year contract.  London's seat is the hottest in the ACC, quite possibly the country. This is the sort of thing Li'l Shane Beamer knows by heart and will remind our recruits of approximately once every four seconds.

Before embarking, some depth chart notes.  I updated it for spring, by the way.  Not a whole lot of position changes; those are hereby detailed:

-- Kwontie Moore from LB to DE.
-- Sean Karl from OT to OG.
-- Eric Tetlow from OG to C.
-- Ross Burbank from C to OG.
-- Wil Wahee from CB to S.

For the record, the official roster lists just five OTs.  Sweet.  And that's with putting Jay Whitmire back at the position where the coaches wanted him all along, which is tackle.  Karl's move to guard is a byproduct of his being bypassed, but the center moves are sending a more pointed message: Ross Burbank probably ran out of chances to win the job, and drops into the shuffle at OG.  Hopes are now apparently pinned on Eric Tetlow, who nosed his way into the depth chart last year as a freshman.

Kwontie Moore's move is the other major thing here; this is probably a combination of two things.  The first is the admittal that he wasn't going to crack the lineup at linebacker unless he wanted to wait til he was a senior, and even then maybe not.  That's as much because of Henry Coley as anything.  Two, DE certainly does need some shoring up.  Far too many unknowns there; not having any real known quantities except for Eli Harold, you might as well add another unknown just to boost your odds of finding a workable combo.

Jake McGee is still listed as a TE here, just for giggles if nothing else.  His roster position is "TE/WR" and he's been doing some more actual WR work than nose-to-the-ground TE work, so we'll see if I change my mind later.

The following names are gone from the list (not including graduated seniors):

-- Adrian Gamble
-- E.J. Scott
-- Pablo Alvarez
-- Matt Fortin
-- Kyrrel Latimer

Scott will spend a graduate year at Wake Forest.  Latimer sort of faded away as early as last year - he was still on the roster, but in sort of a ghost capacity.  Gamble is transferring to parts unknown as of now.  Alvarez has been extraordinarily injury-prone and there was probably a fair amount of mutuality in not bringing him back for a fifth year.  Fortin is going to chase his dream as a Navy SEAL.  (Long-snapping wasn't exciting enough?)

This leaves 88 names on the roster, so, attrition of a minimum of three more is to be expected.

Now, on with the show.

QUARTERBACK

I won't be surprised if the coaches take one.  I won't be surprised if they don't.  You should probably take one each year, but things don't work out in that highly idealized fashion, particularly if you've spent the last couple years fumblefucking the position.  UVA will have five on the roster this year, and, assuming no attrition (quite a stretch, honestly) they'll have five on the roster next year, too.  So I'd look for either one or none in the 2015 class, and I don't think either answer is wrong.  If we take one, it means either we got one the coaches are really high on - think Nick Johns - or they know of some impending attrition.  Or both.  If we don't get one, I don't mind going into next year with this same group of five.

RUNNING BACK

With two good ones graduating this year, it leaves four on the roster for 2015 (not including Daniel Hamm), and that's if LaChaston Smith never makes the move to linebacker.  Two backs in the 2015 class would be a very sound investment.

WIDE RECEIVER

This position got slammed with attrition during the offseason; nevertheless, it remains fairly deep.  Three seniors will graduate - Gooch, Jennings, and Terrell - leaving behind seven.  I don't think it's especially nuts to carry 10 on the roster, and you know how Mike London is about generic athlete types.  Let's say anywhere from 3-5 as a possibility.  I'd prefer three or four, as the junior class consists of just one player (Caanan Severin) and you risk glutting up the position again if you go all the way to five.

TIGHT END

We lose Zach Swanson, and if truth be told, Rob Burns and Mario Nixon aren't likely to be big-timers at the position.  Tight end recruiting is one of the positions most susceptible to offensive philosophy - no matter who you are you need linemen and quarterbacks and so on, but recruiting a tight end is a choice you make, one that's often sacrificed in favor of prospects elsewhere that you want to close on or lose.  Still, there's a need here, and some viable targets, too (Chris Clark would be the dream candidate) and it's a safe bet we'll take at least one, maybe two.

OFFENSIVE LINE

You know how I am about this.  We have a grand total of 12 scholarship players lined up for 2015's roster.  That's before attrition.  So we could take ten linemen and I wouldn't bat an eye.  Well, I would out of sheer surprise, but certainly not in protest.  Five OLs usually constitute a big class - and if we took five I'd still consider the position undermanned.

Need-wise, the barest of bare-bones minimums here should be four.  That's still not enough, but when someone is starving - I mean actually starving - you don't feed them a big steak dinner.  I'd like to take seven, on account of thinking 19 linemen (again - you need a hedge against attrition) is about right, but that would cause problems down the road.  Namely, needing huge classes again later on.  I'll settle for five in the class - the undermanning of the depth chart just isn't going to be fixed in one year.  It's going to be two or three before we have this thing back up to snuff, and that's if we don't neglect the recruiting again.  Call the target 4-6.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE

In only losing one player after 2014, this will be a fairly well-stocked position if it's recruited correctly.  Signing at least one is a must, because five DTs doesn't do the job; I'd rather see two and wouldn't exactly mind three.

DEFENSIVE END

Moving Kwontie Moore to DE puts us at 10, which is a big number, but it solves nothing long term because that junior class is five large.  Getting three (maybe four depending on what you call J.J. Jackson) in the 2014 class was smart, even if they're mostly projects - we needed numbers.  We need them again in 2015 because that junior class will eventually leave and we'll be up on the rocks unless we can get two or three more DEs.  Three would give us the appearance of having just way too damn many in 2015, but that would serve to smooth out the numbers a little, and the best part is they could be redshirted.  I'd say 2-3 is the target, but Jon Tenuta's philosophy might muddy up the numbers a little, particularly in the distinction between DE and LB, and we're probably looking at also continuing to recruit another tweener or two.

LINEBACKER

No complaints about the numbers here; even with four in the senior class, I wouldn't complain if they were replaced with three signees - maybe even two, if one was really good.  Again, the tweener factor complicates the numbers a bit.  This class does have to include, however, at least one prototype middle linebacker, as Henry Coley is graduating and the only other one listed is Micah Kiser.  I'd say a class of 2-4 would be in range, with three as the probable sweet spot.

DEFENSIVE BACK

Honestly, the need here in terms of numbers is really slim, which is why I'm combining CB and S into one.  Even with four graduating seniors, we could honestly get away with sitting tight right where we are, which is to say, one commitment in the form of Juan Thornhill.  I have him listed as a safety, which gives us seven and the luxury of being tremendously picky with any more safety candidates.  One cornerback is all I'd bother taking as well.

What I absolutely wouldn't do is replace all four graduating seniors.  Some of those are scholarships that need to be reallocated, stat.  OL or DT would be a good start.  OL as well, and possibly OL and even OL too.  London's been doing this long enough that it seems safe to declare his philosophy as one of building a football team on athletes that you can try and turn into football players, and most of those generic athletes end up as defensive backs, so if we took four I'd sigh and be totally unsurprised; if we took five I'd complain loudly and still be totally unsurprised.  One more DB besides Thornhill is all I want, but in the business of predicting, 3-4 total seems like a more likely bet.

KICKER

We offered two last year - neither of which took the bait - and will probably try again.  One kicker/punter type is the target, but there's no point offering a scholarship to just any kicker, so it'll probably be another this-guy-or-bust year.

Here's the sum total, then:

QB: 0-1
RB: 2
WR: 3-4
TE: 1-2
OL: 4-6
DT: 2-3
DE: 2-3
LB: 2-3
DB: 3-4
K: 0-1

That's a range of 19-29.  19 won't suffice to fill up the roster, so if this wasn't a hot-seat year I'd say lean hard to the upper end of all those ranges.  This is a combination of a prediction and a wish list; a true wish list would say 5-6 OLs and 2-3 DBs while a true prediction would say more like 1-2 DTs.  Recruiting is a really fudgy science and I'm allowed to do that. It's even fudgier when you throw in the potential transition; you never know how the recruit pool will react.  Al Groh actually managed to recruit a pretty balanced 2010 class before he was fired, but an extremely small one.

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It was a foregone conclusion, but Tony Bennett is the ACC COTY.  As no coach in ACC history has ever improved his team's ACC record in each of his first five seasons - and yes, that includes his first one, as Tony went 5-11 to follow up Dave Leitao's 4-12 - it's fitting timing for the award.

The voting went like so:

ACSMA 2013-14 Coach of the Year Voting
Tony Bennett, Virginia (68)
Roy Williams, North Carolina (6)
Jamie Dixon, Pitt (1)
Brad Brownell, Clemson (1)
Jim Larrañaga, Miami (1)

That Roy Williams got six votes doesn't surprise one bit - it just tells us that there are six voters, certainly all within the borders of North Carolina, that aren't aware the conference extends beyond said borders.  We knew that.  I'm just surprised it wasn't more.  Don't take this as me suggesting Williams is the least bit deserving, of course.

Brad Brownell is not a completely batshit selection.  Certainly much less so than Roy.  This same media poll picked Clemson 14th in the conference, and they finished 6th - that tends to earn some worthy COY consideration most years.  Jim Larranaga (when, by the way, did he start using that ñ?) is a bizarre decision.  I guess finishing 10th when you were picked 12th is overachieving?  As Jamie Oakes pointed out, though, Miami provided Virginia Tech its only two conference wins.  That's much closer to grounds for firing than Best Coach In The Whole Damn Conference.

The real space-cadet pick, though, is Dixon.  Who the hell voted for Jamie Dixon?  Pittsburgh was supposed to be one of the league's pacesetters.  Instead they'll be watching Selection Sunday and hoping Wisconsin-Green Bay doesn't steal their bid.  (Hey, all I'm sayin' is, one school beat UVA, and one didn't.)

I tried to find Caulton Tudor's ballot for all these awards, just so we could all point and laugh at the homer, but have been unsuccessful.  However, I did find this gem from 2011:

With today’s announcement that no one from the regular-season champs was voted first-team all-conference, the Tar Heels were clearly low-balled by voters.  Never before has an outright regular-season ACC champ failed to have a player on the first unit.  This season’s first-team members — Duke’s Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler, Maryland’s Jordan Williams, Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney and Boston College’s Reggie Jackson — had big seasons.  But can anyone seriously think the championship team didn’t deserve at least one first-team berth?

Read more here: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/accnow/tudors-take-tar-heels-robbed-in-all-acc-voting#storylink=cpy

Emphasis mine.  Do you think Tudor voted for any Hoos this year on the first team?  Yeah, me neither.

Read more here: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/accnow/tudors-take-tar-heels-robbed-in-all-acc-voting#storylink=cpy

2014 big-picture

With Signing Day nearly a month into the rearview mirror, it's a good time to project the makeup of the next class up.  I've gotten pretty good at saying this next class will be pretty small and then finding it to be normal-to-biggish, but this time I mean it.  By the time we get to the fall, the senior class will only have like eight people in it.  Since you can usually expect to attrite between five and eight players a year (and eight is kind of pushing it) the 2014 class will (should) cap out around 15 or so players.

Fortunately, it'll be small but talent-rich.  Five-star safety Quin Blanding is widely expected to commit to UVA on Wednesday, and there should be other elite 757 talent not too far behind.  This is a class Mike London's been working on for a while now; Jamil Kamara took a visit to UVA way back in 2011, and had this to say:

"I was there with Eli Harold, Quin Blanding, (Taquan) Smoke Mizzell, Corwin Cutler from Ocean Lakes, and Keanu Reuben from Landstown. ... It's still Virginia Tech and Virginia. Those are my two favorites. They're about the same. I still haven't been to Tech and I really like Virginia."

Do any of those names ring any bells?  The only unfamiliar one is Reuben, who ended up at William & Mary.  Kamara would later take a trip to Virginia Tech and wear a Hokies sweatshirt on the trip.  That led Hokies everywhere to conclude he was obviously Tech-bound, and when it came up eventually that he favored UVA, that helped lead to the creation of the mysterious "Godfather" that was "steering" prospects to Virginia.  Hokies have such vivid imaginations.  (And they're actively destroying their own school's ability to recruit in the Tidewater area, so keep it going fellas.)

Anyway, let's check out the positional breakdown for 2014:

QUARTERBACK

For two years now I have looked like a royal dum-dum for saying I didn't expect to take more than one quarterback in the class, and then we took two.  Well, this year, Corwin Cutler looks like a likely prep prospect, which shifts him back to 2014.  So that's sort of one quarterback in the class, and really, from a purely numbers-management perspective, it works out very well.

So have I learned my lesson?  No, I have not.  Now, any old thing can happen.  Just watch, it probably will.  But: the numbers crunch in this class, the fact that we probably already have a 2014 QB in Cutler, and the other fact that that would put six scholarship QBs on the roster in 2014, gives me no choice but to predict we won't take any more this coming year.  Wait til 2015.

RUNNING BACK

I only have one (Cortavious Givens) on the recruiting board at the moment, but I expect things to pick up a little here.  There are currently five on the roster, three of which will be seniors in 2014, so it's not wise to leave the cupboard bare when they go.  (Not that Smoke Mizzell is chopped liver, but he and Kye Morgan alone aren't a depth chart.)  Look for one or two to appear in the 2014 class.

WIDE RECEIVER

The need here is small - probably for about two.  Kamara is likely to be one.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the second be a case of London dropping a January offer to a 757 guy the way he did with Mason Thomas and Divante Walker, but it's a long year and we'll see.  With only Tim Smith graduating after 2013, though (Bobby Smith's scholarship is probably being turned over to a class of 2013 recruit) and a pretty sizable stable of receivers in the fold, taking more than two would be wasteful.

TIGHT END

There's a weird dichotomy going on here in that the coaches seem to want to recruit a pure tight end prospect, but are being very picky about the ones they offer.  At this point, though, they seem likely to fill the position from within; Mario Nixon and Zach Swanson are strongly rumored to be making the move to TE (back to TE, in Swanson's case) and Max Valles will likely start out there too.  So the need isn't pressing, and it looks from here like the coaches are focusing elsewhere.  I wouldn't rule out taking a TE but I wouldn't bank on it.

OFFENSIVE LINE

As per always, three is the bare minimum, and more are usually to be expected.  The coaches really cranked up the offer cannon aimed at offensive linemen this year; a full eleven of the players on the recruiting board are O-linemen.  Some of that might have been before they dug up George Adeosun and flipped Eric Tetlow, the latter of which was a Signing Day surprise even to the coaches, and so they might be dialing back on some of those.  That said, at least two were in town for this past weekend's junior day, and there are quite a few more that both think very highly of Virginia and wouldn't be turned away if they committed.  I think four linemen is the likely target for a small class like this one, but five wouldn't surprise me.

DEFENSIVE LINE

UVA already has one commitment in the fold (DT Chris Nelson) but it's a coin flip at best that he stays.  He's from Florida and is working the instate-school visit circuit hard; there's a bit of a placeholder element to his status right now.  It might not matter if the Hoos land Andrew Brown and Derrick Nnadi.  The former seems very likely - hard to believe about a five-star talent like Brown, but this is our year, man.  Nnadi is setting up to be a major battleground between UVA and Tech.  Landing both would take care of all defensive tackle needs for 2014, with or without Nelson.

As for DE, having only signed one in 2013 makes this more of a pressing need.  I'd like to see two or even three in this 2014 class.  I realize that would make half the class nothing but O-linemen and DEs, but so be it.  Trenches baby.

LINEBACKER

None are seniors this coming fall, so any we take will add to the numbers without any corresponding subtraction.  That minimizes the need.  We'll probably take one and maybe two, but likely no more.

DEFENSIVE BACK

There's such an enormous glut of players at both CB and safety that it seems like it'd be hard to take very many in 2014.  But it also seems like this position is a prime candidate to be hit by attrition when some of these guys are so likely never to see the field.  Plus, 2014 is the senior year for four safeties, so it makes sense to add a couple more in that recruiting class.  Blanding is probably one; I think the coaches might try to find another as well.  Two outstanding cornerbacks just signed up in 2013 and there's a major freshman glut from 2012 there too, so taking just one is very possible in 2014.

KICKER/PUNTER

It seems having an experienced special teams coach on staff has already had an effect on recruiting, because Mike London just did something he's never done at UVA: offer a scholarship to a kicker.  It's probably the only such offer that'll go out, but UVA's chances of landing him are very good.

So, the numerical breakdown and projection, not counting prep candidates:

QB: 0
RB: 1
WR: 2
TE: 0
OL: 4
DT: 2
DE: 2
LB: 2
DB: 3
K: 1

As ever, all numbers are +/-1.  Especially on the minus side because that adds up to 17.  Maybe knock off a DB and an OL.

Now to finish things off, the year's first recruiting board update.  Here we go:

-- Added K Gary Wunderlich to blue.  And in case you're wondering, I'm fully on board with the idea of putting a kicker on scholarship if you find a really good one.  Good kickers aren't all that common in college and I hate watching a perfectly good drive go to waste because of a missed 35-yard field goal.

-- Added OTs Will Richardson and Bentley Spain to green.  I resisted adding Spain when I made the original board because he had such a damn offer list, but he put UVA in his top six so what the hey.  That top six also includes LSU, Michigan, and Stanford so Virginia is sort of a one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other inclusion, not to mention that if "numbers of articles by one particular Rivals affiliate" is a good indicator, he's a South Carolina lean.  But still.

-- Added DE Jeremiah Clarke to green.  Clarke picked up an offer at the junior day.

-- Removed LB Troy Reeder from green.  Reeder was even kind of borderline blue-green in my thinking, but he committed to Penn State today.  Bother.

-- Moved TE Chris Laye from green to yellow.

-- Moved ATH Travon McMillian and DE Jalyn Holmes from red to yellow.  Holmes is a guy the coaches are on like white on rice but hasn't - until recently - been all that receptive to UVA.  Owing to a need for DEs, though, if I could put one guy from the red or yellow lists into the verbally committed section, it'd be Holmes.

the law firm of porter, philon, garrett, and sills

Let's face it: Recruiting is ridiculous.  It's a meat market.  There are coaches who treat it that way, or worse.  We as fans are no help; winning recruiting battles against our rivals has become just as important as doing so on the field.  If they beat us in November, we got another chance in February.

I'll be the first to admit, too, it's a tough balancing act for coaches.  They have to be psychologists and math majors all in one, juggling the whims of 17-year-old high schoolers, trying to guess which ones like you best, figuring out how to balance 22+ positional needs with the available talent.  Because of that (and because we want our team to be better than their team) we tolerate things like pulled offers, grayshirts, and the like.  There are lines not to be crossed, of course, but for some (especially in the SEC) those lines are a little further down the sketchy side of the spectrum than others.

There are a few things that ought not to be ever tolerated, though.  Without sounding too preachy here, we're talking about high school juniors and seniors, and their hopes and dreams and futures etc. etc.  For most of us, we knew the rules we were playing by.  We applied, and waited for the envelopes.  (Or these days, emails, I guess.)  Football is as much a yes-or-no world as regular admissions, but the recruits ought to at least know the rules of the playing field.  There are certain practices run by certain coaches that don't run afoul of the NCAA's rules, but they do change the unwritten ones right out from under your eyes.

The four gentlemen named in the title are as follows:

-- Elliott Porter was an LSU recruit who signed his LOI, enrolled, and moved into the dorm at LSU.  On the eve of fall camp - the date by which teams must be down to the limit of 85 scholarships - Les Miles informed him he'd be grayshirting.  Surprise, no scholarship for you even though you were promised one, no football practice, no season, no access to the facilities, no nothing until January.  Porter struggled with what to do, transferred to Kentucky, didn't like it, transferred back, and is now an LSU walk-on because SEC scholarship rules prevent him from having a scholarship anymore - I think he can get one after two years on the team, but that's basically three years of paying your own way.

-- Darius Philon signed with Arkansas this February.  He didn't really want to.  He - and apparently his entire high school from the sound of the video of his signing day ceremony - wanted to sign with Alabama.  Philon announced Alabama as his choice, but looked seasick throughout the entire thing.  Reason - only he knew that he'd just been told he'd be grayshirting if he chose Alabama.  He'd committed to Auburn in July, been convinced by Nick Saban to switch to Alabama in August, and was a solid Alabama commit for five months.  Then Alabama got Korren Kirven on Signing Day.  Suddenly, there wasn't a spot in the fall for Philon.  Hello surprise grayshirt.

-- Chris Garrett was a backup quarterback for LSU with designs on moving up the ladder and eventually starting.  ESPN did an OTL piece on oversigning where Garrett was heavily featured; he'd met with Les Miles over the summer, and Miles encouraged him to keep working hard, you're doing great kid, etc. etc. - and didn't tell him that several days prior, a letter had come out from the LSU athletic department informing Garrett that his scholarship wasn't being renewed.  Miles then spun Garrett's departure as a surprise and Garrett's decision entirely.

-- David Sills is about 15 years old, and has been a hotshot quarterback for about four years.  When he was 13 he gave a verbal commitment to USC.  That got a lot of people clucking about way-too-early beginnings of the recruiting process, and rightly so.  (Totally irrelevant footnote: Sills goes to the same Delaware school that Trent Corney briefly transferred to and then left.)

Unless you like jerking high-schoolers around and taunting them with visions of a bright future and then pulling it out from under their feet, or you like the idea of grown men prowling middle schools in search of football talent, these are pretty much bad developments all around.  There needs to be a lot more control over this stuff.  And I'm not even talking about the boosters that hang around the fringes of football camps and offer green handshakes, or free cars and tattoos and whatnot.  This post isn't even about that.  But there do need to be reforms in the process to protect the players from their own coaches.

Tackling the last issue first; recruiting creep.  David Sills - and recruiting creep in general - is something the NCAA is acutely aware of.  They really want to get that under control.  Unfortunately, it's really tough, and the NCAA's attempts to fix it made things worse, not better.  Under the old rules, a football player could receive a written offer no earlier than September 1 of his junior year.  The NCAA bumped that back to August 1 of his senior year.  Great idea, but all it did was fuzzy up the process even more.  It didn't do a thing to curtail the recruiting of juniors and even sophomores, and it means that a player can't be properly sure of his status until August of his senior year, by which time the process is in full swing at a minimum, or for a lot of players, over already.

The NCAA - or at least, its conferences - is also becoming aware of the Garrett issues, the renewing of scholarships.  It has always been on a year-by-year basis, but it's also been the understanding that a player gets to hang around for four years unless he screws up off the field, and the fifth year is up to the coaches.  This year, the Big Ten fixed that problem and offered actual four-year scholarships to its recruits.  Some coaches complained that it was a stupid idea because schools would then use that as a recruiting tactic.  To which I say: DUH.

What Saban did to Philon isn't against any recruiting rules at all.  (It will be if I get my way, but wait another paragraph or two and we'll get there.)  It's still a dick thing to do.  Same for what happened to Porter, only even more so since Porter was locked in.  A system which lets the grown-ass men off scot-free and punishes the teenager in that situation is messed up.  So here are the solutions to all of the above.

-- First, allow written offers to go out on Signing Day.  That is, the recruiting class of 2013 can get their letters on Signing Day 2012, while they're juniors.  Hell, everyone's next to a fax machine that day anyway.  That would better establish a mindset of the recruiting season.  I don't think there's anything that can be done (that I would like, anyway) to stop coaches from giving verbal offers to juniors before that, or sophomores, or 7th-graders, or whatever.  But there does also come a point where it becomes self-defeating because you really can't project a 7th-grader.

At any rate, the NCAA does need to admit that the new August 1 limit is a failure.  It doesn't do anything to stop coaches recruiting or offering, it just hazes up the picture.  Let the juniors who'll be rising seniors know where they stand by giving them their written offers in a timely fashion.

-- Second, let schools offer anywhere from one to four years on their scholarship.  Any arguments against this are incomprehensible and stupid.

-- Third, make coaches accountable for their written offers.  The following should be components of the written offer:

• It lists the semester of enrollment at the school and the beginning of the grant-in-aid.
• It lists the number of years the offer is good for, renewable at the end up to four years yada yada yada.  Most of them would probably be for four years.
• It lists the conditions which the recruit must adhere to in order to continue receiving his scholarship - good academic standing, no police trouble, etc. etc., and may not include football-related reasons.
• It is binding.

That is to say, it's binding on the school.  NO rescinsions once accepted.  (As we'll see later, it'll be necessary for the schools to be able to pull the offer, which they would do with another written notice.)  Acceptance of the offer constitutes a deal.  You can't pull an offer that a player has accepted.  Which leads us to....

-- Fourth, a player can at any time before Signing Day, send in an acceptance of the written offer.  This is binding on the school but not binding on the player.  A player who sends in his acceptance may not be contacted by coaches other than the ones from the school he committed to, but he can rescind the acceptance at any time up til Signing Day.

Large parts of this fourth idea, if not the whole thing, are not originally mine; I read them first at MGoBlog.  It makes sense, though.  This would cut down on flimsy verbal "commitments" and would make coaches accountable to the kids they recruit.  In other words, no more Darius Philons.  You want to recruit over top of a kid, you figure out how to make the numbers work without springing a surprise on him at the last minute.  Darius Philon had every right to believe he had a spot for him at Alabama.

Many people want an early signing period to solve this issue, but I can't think of a bigger mistake than that.  As anyone who follows basketball recruiting knows, the "early signing period" is really "the signing period."  It would just push recruiting earlier into a player's high school career as coaches scramble to fill their classes by the end of the early signing period.  And it would be detrimental to a lot of players because December/January coach firings always shake up the recruiting scene.  A kid who signs is bound to that school and needs to jump through a lot of hoops to get out of it, so it wouldn't be helpful.  It's not just players who're committed to a school where the coach just got fired, either.  Take Roy Roundtree, a receiver at Michigan.  Roundtree always wanted to go to Michigan but was never offered, so he committed to Purdue instead.  When Rich Rodriguez was hired, one of his first offers was to Roundtree, who jumped.  Guys like Roundtree would be stuck if they signed during a mythical early signing period, and you know very well that coaches would pressure them to sign.

-- Fifth, medical scholarships must be signed off by an independent, NCAA-employed or contracted doctor.  In other words, no more of Nick Saban's practice of involuntarily ending a player's career for healable injuries because he needs room to bring in his recruiting class and the player in question is only a backup lineman.  No going on medical scholarship just because you want to quit football, hence the NCAA signoff.  Also the NCAA signoff because their doctors would not be beholden to the coaches, who in turn are beholden to the scholarship limit. 

If a school attempts to end a kid's career with a medical scholarship, but the NCAA doctor examines the player and finds that his injury isn't career-ending and he would still be able to play football within his period of eligibility (even if it takes a medical redshirt year), then the player is offered the choice of continuing to play for that team and counting toward their regular scholarship numbers or transferring without a penalty year to the school of his choosing (as long as they have room etc. etc.)

-- Sixth, that 85-scholarship limit?  Make it so it has to be adhered to on Signing Day, not just at the beginning of camp.  Abolish entirely the limit of players you can sign, so long as you're under the limit on Signing Day.  Do the counting so that when a senior's eligibility ends, he comes off the books the moment the season ends.  It'd be very easy for anyone to track how many scholarships are available and how many are promised and so on.  Coaches will complain that this would mean they carry fewer than 85 most of the time.  I wouldn't mind bumping the limit up to 90 or so, as long as it's a hard limit.  It's not some great injustice if you have to have 82 instead of 85 or 87 instead of 90.  Next time, recruit kids that won't wash out of school or do stupid things to get themselves kicked off the team.  If you screw up and go over the limit on Signing Day, say you end up with 92 instead of 90 because you got some surprise commitments, well, you should've pulled their offers is what you should've done.  But you then have one of two options: you can un-renew some fifth years (the fifth year always having been with the understanding that it's not at all guaranteed, both before and after this little reform attempt) or you can play the year with 92, but your limit drops to 88 next year as a penalty.  Better learn to sign a smaller class.  And if you go over your limit two years in a row, the penalty becomes two-for-one.

So, to recap: Binding written offers, acceptances of which constitute a binding one-way agreement in which the school is beholden to the player but the player is not beholden to the school - except that sending in that acceptance means the player can't be contacted by other schools.  This is to ensure both sides are serious.  On Signing Day, it becomes official and now the player is also locked in.  Coaches can no longer fudge their numbers and oversign and then surprise a kid with a grayshirt.  (If you want to offer a kid as a grayshirt, hey, go ahead.  That can be stipulated in the offer by saying the scholarship begins in the winter and not the fall.  But then everything is on the table, none of this oh-by-the-way crap.)  Coaches can also no longer use medical scholarships as forced attrition tools.  And no surprise non-renewals, either, not if you've promised four years.

Recruiting is such a crazy deal that I don't have any illusions we've solved everything here.  But I do think that this fixes some of the worst practices that coaches do.  (LSU and Alabama, I'm mainly looking at you.  You want to know why Nick Saban was so willing to let Phillip Sims go?  He had to.  He needs the attrition.)  Anything that makes college football look less like a sweatshop is a plus.

2013 early look

I'll toss in some bastyball notes at the end, but I just don't have enough of that circling inside my head to make a full post out of.  So today, we'll take the first look at the makeup of the recruiting class of 2013.

The first thing you need to know is that it'll be small (relatively speaking) because the upcoming senior class is small.  By the time we get to the fall, there'll be no more than 12 players in it.  And the class behind them - this past year's sophomores - doesn't have a lot of candidates to be uninvited for their fifth year.  That's as it stands now, anyway, but I don't see more than three right now.

As always, you have to factor in some attrition, but this 2013 class isn't going to push the limits of the rulebook the way the previous two have.  What's the target number?  I would say 16-19. No more than 20 or 21 players at the most, and that would really require some major attrition.  The first one is already on board - the recruiting sites aren't officially counting Trent Corney among the commitments just yet, but I am.

So let's see what the major needs are.....

QUARTERBACK

This is not a need, but we'll probably take one anyway.  The instate crop is too good to ignore.  You probably know the names right now, because you've been hearing them for a while - Ryan Burns of Stone Bridge (no relation to Rob who came from the same school), Bucky Hodges of Salem, and Christian Hackenberg from Fork Union.  Those three, plus Good Counsel's Brendan Marshall, comprise the offer list at the moment.

After declaring we were done recruiting quarterbacks when Matt Johns committed and then ending up with green eggs and ham on my face when Greyson Lambert did too, I shouldn't be ruling out surprises.  But the depth chart is pretty full now, so it wouldn't be surprising if we whiff on quarterbacks entirely and it would be hugely surprising if we took two again.  Especially in a smaller class.  I'll put myself back on that limb and say we won't take two.  But I think we'll take one, and right now I'd call it a coin flip as to whether we get one of those four.

RUNNING BACK

This is a need, however, and UVA will look for two, if not three.  (Well, maybe not three.  But you never know.)  Taquan Mizzell seems likely-ish to pick UVA, hailing from pipeline school Bayside and all.  In an ideal world, the other back we get will be a tough, pile-moving, Big Ten-style big back.  The coaches tried hard for one in 2012 and didn't get one.  The deal is that Kye Morgan probably redshirts and puts a full year in between him and the trio of Parks, Richardson, and Shepherd, which means Morgan would lead the replacement charge when those three graduate.  But not getting two backs in this class would mean way too thin of a lineup at that point.  Two is the bare minimum.

There's also a need for an H-back type of player.  Corney is being offered without much regard (yet) to slotting, and that could be him, but he's probably going to outgrow it if he hasn't already.  The coaches pursued Nathan Staub and didn't get him, so they'll probably try again with a similar type of player to fill the fullback/H-back role.  Otherwise that position will have to be manned from within, because Zach Swanson is the only listed scholarship player right now.

WIDE RECEIVER/TIGHT END

We took bloody six this year.  I think there's sort of a fair chance we won't take that many again.  And there is not one rising senior in the WR corps, so this is completely not a need.  Zack Jones is Perry's brother and will probably end up at UVA playing receiver.  And you almost never see recruiting classes with just one wideout, so another one is probably in the cards.  And the coaches seem to have this thing for recruiting generically athletic instate players and letting the slotting chips fall where they may, so that might bring us to three.  If we take more than that it's gross negligence.

Besides that, I expect one tight end to show up, since we graduate two.  That guy might be called a defensive end or something originally, like Max Valles.

OFFENSIVE LINE

Three linemen is a working, basic minimum regardless of class size.  If you could only bring in three players, they'd probably be offensive linemen.  The class will probably tilt toward tackles a little bit since three of the four players in the 2012 class look like interior types.  But the conveyor belt is humming along nicely and O-line looks like a strength for the foreseeable future.  With only two scholarship players graduating after this season (Oday Aboushi and Matt Mihalik, the latter being a fourth-year junior and a possibility for a non-invite) I don't think the coaches will take four scholarship linemen.  They've done a good job of filling the program with talent in this department and now have the luxury of being very choosy.

DEFENSIVE LINE

Likewise.  If 2012 was the year of going crazy on WRs, 2011 was the year of DEs.  Only two scholarship linemen will graduate after this coming fall - there were three, but Connor McCartin and his medical scholarship are counting as attrition to help make room for the 2012 class.

Even though Tyrell Chavis probably ends up in the 2013 class, another DT is a need.  The 2012 class only has Chavis and some defensive ends that might end up tackles; a true one-tech or zero-tech nose tackle is something we ought to have more of.  Aside from that, you probably take two defensive ends and call it a day.  Again: we can be picky here.

LINEBACKER

This is where we'll take the biggest hit after the season; one-third of the graduating seniors are linebackers.  Four graduating players at one position in a class of 12 is a lot.  Might we take four to replace them?  It shouldn't come as a surprise if we do.  Linebackers are nice in that they sometimes have the flexibility to become H-backs, which, hey, that's a big need remember, so a distinct possibility is recruiting a guy whom all the services list as a linebacker, and telling him he's a fullback all the way.  Or else recruiting all of them as linebackers with the idea of converting one of them later.  (People still half-expect D.J. Hill to make that switch, after all.)  Add all this up and expect UVA to take quite a few of these guys.  All flavors of linebacker are on the table.

DEFENSIVE BACKS

Annnnnnnd....this is where I throw up my hands in defeat.  You'd think, having taken a busload of safety-types in 2011 and another busload of cornerback-types in 2012, we might back off a little.  Not so; in fact, we're already in decent shape for more cornerbacks.

This past season, the coaches broke up the logjam a little in the freshman ranks of defensive ends and safeties by playing Thompson Brown, Anthony Harris, and Kameron Mack.  People complain about burned redshirts and wotnot all the damn time, but this was smart from a roster-management standpoint, because it's terrible to have one guy in one class and five in the next.  So I expect something similar to happen with that wad of cornerbacks, helping to clear things up a little.  For 2013, we'll probably need three DBs, evenly split between safeties and corners.  This almost definitely means we'll take one guy who is simply called "defensive back" with no definite slot at corner or safety.  This is what coaches do to purposely drive bloggers crazy.

So, the final breakdown?  Looks like this:

QB: 1
RB: 2
WR: 2
TE: 1
OL: 3
DL: 4
LB: 4
DB: 3

That adds up to 20, for the math uninclined.  Obviously, because this stuff depends on the whims of 17-year-olds, each of those numbers is +/-1, depending on how those whims turn out.  I think there'll be a little more attrition than normal in the next 18 months, because of how big Mike London's first two classes turned out to be.  Call it a lesson learned from Tony Bennett's heralded six-man class that has all of two players left in it.

If you're wondering whether you should believe these numbers or not, take a look at last year's post at this time and ask yourself if I nailed it or not.  I call myself out for being wrong often enough, so I think I'm entitled to point out that we did, in fact, take three linebackers, one (eventual) tight end, and four of each type of lineman, as predicted.  On the other hand, I might have said something along the lines of "two wide receivers" and in fact I was off by four.  (But only three if one gets moved to defense, which would fulfill the prediction of six DBs that I made.)  I'm also taking credit for the 2 RBs thing, because it's not like we didn't try.  But I also predicted "no quarterbacks," so, oops.

Anyway, there you are.  Some other miscellaneous trends to watch for:

- I don't think we'll be as heavy on the camp commitments as we have been.  Coaches typically use the camps as ways to identify players they haven't evaluated much yet, and several offers usually go out on the spot.  But camp commitments also tend to be the low-star, lightly-recruited types.  Since we don't need to - and can't - pack the bus to the gills this year, as we have in previous years, look for the coaches to be a little more cautious in extending camp offers.

- Also look for the coaches to look farther south for some of these recruits.  In 2011 they re-established the home base: only three recruits came from outside the borders of Maryland and Virginia and one of them had committed to Al Groh.  (That was Adrian Gamble.)  In 2012, that number rose to 10, with the coaches working the northeast hard: two commits each from old stomping grounds in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and two from places more well-known for lacrosse recruits than football ones.  But the other state they worked on?  Georgia.  Al Groh's staff used to work the northern end of things very hard, particularly New Jersey, and he drew talent from New York and some from the Midwest as well.  Other than North Carolina, Groh went south only very sporadically.  London, however, seems to be leaving the Midwest alone for the most part, and working on Georgia as one of UVA's primary talent mines.  And to a lesser extent, Texas.  And to a lesser extent than that, Florida.  London appears to have identified Georgia as a point of emphasis, perhaps even more so than North Carolina.

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In the world of round orange balls going through circular hoops, the ACC appears to be settling into a hierarchy of sorts:

- At the top is FSU, Duke, and UNC, in some order.
- The next layer consists of UVA, NC State, and Miami - propitious for us, because we beat them both and won't play them again, which'll come in handy should tiebreakers be necessary.
- Then you have the three children playing with loaded guns.  They look harmless and innocent, but sooner or later that thing is going off and someone's getting hurt.  These are Maryland, Clemson, and Tech.  None will play in anything resembling a postseason tournament, but all of them have inexplicably beaten someone really good (and/or given them a real scare) and will probably do so again at some point.
- Finally we have the bottom level of Wake, GT, and BC, none of which would hurt a fly.

The thing is to get to the fourth seed or better in the ACC.  Then you get the bye, of course, but the thing about not being the sixth seed (or worse) is that any second-round game would involve nobody scarier than yourself.  Sixth seed has to play the three seed.

That's not to say this isn't open to some change.  In the part of that hierarchy we care about, Duke is the most likely to shake things up.  This is because there's a growing body of evidence exposing them as a Sweet 16 team, but little more.  Thanks to Miami, they now have two losses, and they have yet to play either of their games against Carolina and also they have to visit FSU, which, like Miami, beat them on their suddenly not-that-scary home floor.  Some things would have to go surprisingly well for us (or the Pack or Canes) to pass Duke in the seeding, but it certainly looks as if they'll finish with no fewer than five losses and that's if they don't startle one of the loaded-gun kids or get tripped by NC State.

As for UVA, 5-3 at the halfway mark is not half bad if we want to get to 10-6, but there isn't much margin for error.  To get to that 10-win mark, we have to do one or more of three things:

- Upset UNC
- Revenge on FSU
- Take care of business with no stumbles in the five other games.

The two things I want out of this season are to play on Saturday of the ACC tournament and play in the second week of the NCAAs.  So really, the taking care of business thing is a goal regardless of whatever else.

signstravaganza 2012

Normally I like to wait til late in the evening for the annual Signstravaganza post, but hell with it; this year's class is drama-free and we're not waiting for anything.  (The Stefon Diggs ship has sailed, so don't even get your heart rate up.)

UVA has received 26 letters of intent.  OK, 25; being already enrolled, Greyson Lambert doesn't have to sign one.  For those who keep track of scholarships, that gives us 88 total committed scholarships for next fall, three over the limit of 85.  Take away one because Connor McCartin is going medical next year due to concussions, so, 87.  One of the worst-kept secrets in history is that Tyrell Chavis is probably going to have to prep, so make it 86.  In other words, normal attrition will get us below the 85 number without much trouble.  You probably weren't worried about oversigning anyway, but there you go.

This class had been ranked in every service's top 25, but that was bound to take a hit since we'd wrapped it up and not everyone else had.  We were always going to get leapfrogged.  Still, even with the NLOID signings going on, UVA doesn't drop far - in most cases, just outside top 25s.  26th to Rivals, 27th to Scout.  And still 20th to 24/7.  It doesn't have the star power or Signing Day glitz of last year (when we added Darius Jennings and Dominique Terrell on the big day) - and star-wise it falls short of VT's - but it's a solid continuation of last year's efforts.

Time for the positional rundown on this year's class:

QUARTERBACK

In a year in which I wouldn't have been surprised if we didn't take any quarterbacks, we took two.  It looks like we're logjamming the position and that taking both Johns and Lambert puts a 2013 quarterback in real jeopardy.  Which would be too bad because the instate crop, after being completely barren this year, is huge for the 2013 class.  Huge.

But, it's less crammed up than you might think.  Mike Rocco is the starter and, barring something unforeseen and highly unfortunate, will be for the next two years.  Metheny seems perfectly happy with his role on the team; people tend to assume he will be the next to transfer but he has got Happy Hoo written on his face.  Talk about a guy that loves UVA.  I don't expect him to transfer, but neither do I expect he'll be seen as an obstacle.  Watford is a wild card, of course, and may or may not end up at safety or something.  At any rate I don't think this two-man QB class will be a huge impediment to 2013 recruiting.  It won't help, but it won't be a decisive factor.

Both of these guys have "prototypical" size, which means they're tall, at best moderately mobile, pocket passers.  In terms of the recruiting metrics - stars and offers - Johns has a profile awfully similar to Metheny, while Lambert is the star attraction who was courted by Alabama, Georgia, etc. etc.  But Johns had the more productive senior year of high school.  Lambert will no doubt continue to be a star attraction this spring, as the new kid on the block in spring practice, but the truth is both are likely to stay in the shadows for a couple years, and compete with each other the whole time.  If all goes well, by the time Rocco has graduated as the all-time leading passer in UVA history (don't laugh - he will if he stays on pace) the decision as to who will succeed him will already have been made.  This class sets up a stable succession order, a much better state of affairs then yearly camp battles.

RUNNING BACK/FULLBACK

Kye Morgan should be a solid addition, but he's the only one.  We could've really used a big bruiser to complement this class.  And there aren't any fullbacks or any candidates to move there, meaning that position will have to be filled from within the current roster as we only have Zach Swanson there next year.

WIDE RECEIVER/TIGHT END

A bit unnecessarily in my stupid blogger opinion, London and co. loaded up on the receivers like crazy.  We FUMA-shirted Adrian Gamble, and he's joined by no fewer than five other players at this point at receiver.  That includes Kyle Dockins, who the school lists as a receiver rather than a tight end.  This is the kind of thing that fuels speculation that guys like Anthony Cooper will end up at safety.  Since we have zero safeties in this class (as Kevin Green pretty much officially didn't make it and Demeitre Brim is a linebacker) this would seem like it sorta kinda makes sense.  Plus, Cooper is listed as "ATH" by the school right now.  So.

The biggest catch (you see what I'm doing here?) is Canaan Severin.  Cooper is every bit as talented, but like I said: probable future safety.  Severin and Cooper are the two guys driving the rankings.  Then there's Mario Nixon, one of my favorite recruits just because he got the Hokies' panties all in a twist by flipping allegiances in August.  It caused them to say stupid things like "Anyone that breaks a commitment is not someone we want on our team," which means they'll be kicking Darius Redman off the team any day now.

Max Valles will likely join the team as a tight end, replacing Dockins in the pipeline, which is an improvement because Dockins would've had to put on a ton of weight.  Valles is much closer to field-ready in that department.

OFFENSIVE LINE

No stars here.  But no fliers, either.  OK, maybe one, in Canadian FUMA prepper Ryan Doull, but even that isn't like we had to dig real deep.  This class is the very definition of solid when it comes to the offensive side of the trenches.  And as I've mentioned, VT will have the higher-ranked class when the dust settles today - but they flamed out almost completely on the O-line.  If you can't get any major stars (think Eugene Monroe or Morgan Moses when they committed) this kind of class is the ideal O-line group.  (And this was a thin year for offensive linemen in the state.)  UVA has done a nice job maintaining continuity and a stable succession plan at O-line, and the remarkable thing is it carried over nicely between coaching regimes.  This class keeps the conveyor belt humming along.

A short note: four linemen signed LOIs, but there will be a fifth in the class - instate lineman Jackson Matteo committed yesterday as a recruited walk-on.  Matteo had committed to a scholarship from Temple over several other MAC offers, but preferred to pay his own way in the ACC.

DEFENSIVE LINE

Here's where to find the star power.  Eli Harold is not only the #1 recruit in the state (even Doughty says so) he's the top guy on our list according to everyone you ask.  Freakish athletic pass-rushing ability is something we now lack on the current roster, giving Harold a wide open lane to freshman-year playing time.  Both he and Michael Moore turned down the lure of Florida and the approximately forty-two hepzillion other offers they had, to play for Virginia, and in Moore's case, Dad.  In any other year Courtnye Wynn would be an attention-grabbing pickup, but this year, he gets a tad overshadowed.  No matter.  UVA's defensive line of the future is scary.

And we shouldn't forget about the fourth D-liner, Tyrell Chavis, who, through family circumstances out of his control, will need a FUMA-shirt year before he's eligible.  Not only has he got a great shot to be a starter at nose tackle in the future, he's helping keep a Varina pipeline open to UVA - a happy hunting ground for sure.

LINEBACKER

The big deal here, of course, is Kwontie Moore.  Moore is one of the top three recruits in this class, and if all goes well during his career, he'll give us the kind of range at inside linebacker that we haven't had in a while.  Guys like Steve Greer and Jon Copper are/were strong, powerful, and heady players, but they never had the side-to-side abilities that Moore should possess.

The other two linebackers are intriguing and two of the more interesting stories of the recruiting season.  Mark Hall was the first commit of the class, and he comes from a UVA family; his younger brother Devon is said to be an even better basketball player than Mark is a footballer, and will likely give his commitment to Tony Bennett eventually.  Demeitre Brim was another very early commit, sold on the school and coaches by Kwontie Moore (who wasn't even committed yet.)  He gave his verbal before even visiting, and for a while was a target of a great host of other schools attempting to pry him free.  It didn't work.  UVA got in the door early on a fairly big-time Florida prospect here and slammed it shut before the big-timey-ness really got out to the world.

DEFENSIVE BACK

There isn't the star power here, but there's certainly quantity.  The best-known name to UVA fans is Maurice Canady, who isn't a guarantee to land at cornerback anyway.  Canady was a camp commit and not generating much attention otherwise, until a senior season where he was forced into quarterback duty for Varina and left cleat marks on everyone unfortunate enough to have to try and stop him.  After a rocky first outing, he dominated.

But as a cornerback, he's as much a square-one guy as the rest of this class.  C.J. Moore is fast (insanely fast) but small.  Kelvin Rainey is the purest cornerback in the class, but he comes from Houston so he hasn't generated much buzz, and he didn't get much of a sniff from instate schools above C-USA level.  This group is essentially a big blender, from which a couple of these guys will emerge as players and a couple will not.

KICKER/PUNTER

No scholarship guys, but some recruited walk-ons who'll join other recruited walk-ons in a wide-open, no-holds-barred, celebrity deathmatch for the starting jobs in the fall, at which point we'll all hold our breath the first time the winner trots out to try a field goal because there's nothing worse than breaking in a new kicker.  This is not as much fun as when we yoinked Jimmy Howell from Northwestern.

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OK, so, let's get to the lists:

Top five stories of the 2012 recruiting season:

1. UVA flips Mario Nixon to complete the Norfolk Christian quadfecta, along with Wil Wahee, Courtnye Wynn, and Kwontie Moore.  Nixon, at the behest of his NCS teammates, visited a UVA fall practice while still technically a VT verbal, causing the Tech contingent to huff about broken promises and such.  If you believe Hokie fans, their coaches are petty enough to pull his offer for that; regardless, it made waves for a couple days.

2. UVA fans hold their breath as Michael Moore, in trying to decide between Florida and Virginia, schedules a trip to Gainesville, reschedules at Will Muschamp's suggestion due to the latter's absence, takes the trip, and chooses Virginia anyway.

3. Greyson Lambert commits after Mike London demonstrates what a coach should do in the event of his absence during a prospect's visit: make a personalized video for him to watch.  Lambert was so impressed he and his dad asked to watch it a second time so they could record it on their phones and show Mom.

4. Demeitre Brim makes a surprise early commitment, and UVA fends off a number of other suitors over the summer, including Miami and Wisconsin.

5. Eli Harold, whose mother passed away from cancer a couple years ago, chooses her birthday to announce his choice of UVA (over Penn State and Florida), and immediately becomes Virginia's recruiter-in-chief among prospects, much as Clifton Richardson was in 2011.

Five most likely to play as true freshmen:

1. Eli Harold
2. Canaan Severin
3. Maurice Canady
4. Demeitre Brim
5. Michael Moore

This is in order, by the way.  Harold is the top choice because he checks off all the boxes: he's got the athleticism and the talent, and he fills a need.  Severin doesn't quite fill a need, but he does fill a niche - he's a likely candidate to jump right in as a possession receiver, with Matt Snyder and Kris Burd graduating.  When Snyder went down with a broken foot, he was simply replaced with more of Burd, which indicates that nobody on the roster was available and/or ready to fill that possession role.  Severin might.

Canady is the latest exhibit in the assertion that Virginia fans get way too excited about instate talent that dazzles in high school.  Still, dazzle he did, and if he's got half the athleticism of the hype, he'll make a great special-teamer as a freshman, and make a push to get on the field as a nickel corner, too.  London has made passing references to the idea that Ausar Walcott might have outgrown linebacker (I still think this is a motivational tactic, but still.)  If that's the case then we need a new Will.  Caleb Taylor is the current backup, but Brim could find his way into a role there.  And Moore is simply a big guy with the kind of talent you can't ignore.  Eventually I think he settles into a role at tackle instead of end, but even with a stacked lineup at D-line, he's got the ability to carve out a role for himself.

All that said, we played quite a few true freshmen at various places last year; this season, there'll be a lot more redshirting going on.

Five I'm most excited about:

1. Eli Harold
2. Kwontie Moore
3. Michael Moore
4. Greyson Lambert
5. Canaan Severin

Defense, defense, defense.  My favorite thing in football to watch is an unstoppable running back; we don't have that, but we do have my second-favorite thing: a stacked defensive line.  All of these guys had offers from the kind of schools that people don't expect UVA to beat out for talent.

Five sleepers:

1. Demeitre Brim
2. Mark Hall
3. Ryan Doull
4. Maurice Canady
5. Kye Morgan

Inclusion on this list requires two things: you must have been given the two-star of doom by at least one recruiting service, and I must think something about your game is well above two-star.  This year we had a lot of choices, because there was a lot of disagreement among the services who our two-stars were.  Only one got two stars from everyone.  These are my top five "two-stars," but the truth is that all of them had three-star ratings from at least two services.

Hell, Brim was thisclose to being a four-star at both Rivals and ESPN.  But Scout left him at two.  That plus the fervor at which other schools tried to convert him makes him sleeper #1.  Hall is a mid-to-high three-star to everyone but ESPN, and I think because he committed so early, he's the #1 most-overlooked recruit by UVA fans.  Doull got his two-star from Scout, but he's a 300-pound guy with a lacrosse/hockey background.  ESPN says strength and run-blocking are his positives, and this is a guy who supposedly runs a 5.0 forty (per Rivals.)  I'd be skeptical of that time, but "nimble feet" are always mentioned in his scouting reports no matter who's writing them.  I'll take it.

Canady, we've discussed in some detail already, but still got three stars from just two services. And one was a late-season adjustment.  Morgan got a baffling two stars from ESPN, which is disappointing considering his offer list.  The funny thing is that Morgan was a heavy Rutgers lean until Rutgers informed him his spot was taken, and by a guy with almost universally lower ratings and no offers but the Rutgers one.  (And now the one coach that wanted him is employed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.)  Thanks, Rutgers.

Eat it, Tech:

Eli Harold
Andre Miles-Redmond
Courtnye Wynn
Kwontie Moore
Mario Nixon

The guys with Tech offers.  The list the other way round is much bigger, though.

Eat it, Terps:

Eli Harold

The surprisngly teeny-weeny list of guys with Maryland offers.  No, the list the other way round is not any bigger, comprising just two players: Wes Brown and P.J. Gallo, the latter of which I've never heard of.  There are other players we both offered, of course, who went to other schools, but this is a shockingly tiny overlap all the same.  How, for example, did Michael Moore not have a Maryland offer?  Do you suppose things like that are why Terp fans are so pissed at Randy Edsall?

Eat it, Carolina:

Eli Harold
Kwontie Moore
Michael Moore

Dude even had a Carolina offer.  We didn't succeed in pulling anyone out of North Carolina this year.  This is a 3-to-3 tie, with Carolina getting three guys with a UVA offer, although none of them are on this level.  But they can probably claim victories in the real head-to-head showdowns, earning commitments from both Jon Heck and Nathan Staub, both of whom we recruited fairly hard.

The ones that got away:

Stefon Diggs (undeclared)
Alex Carter (Stanford)
DeVante Harris (Texas A&M)
J.C. Coleman (Tech)
Win Homer (Boston College)
Trey Edmunds (Tech)
Adam Bisnowaty (Pittsburgh)
Imani Cross (Nebraska)
Brent Wilkerson (Penn State)
Chris Mangus (Tech)
Nathan Staub (North Carolina)
C.J. Prosise (Notre Dame)

These are the biggest misses of the class.  All of them are players we had a legitimate, real shot at, and would still fill a real need even today.  I didn't include, for example, Nigel Williams (because we have Courtnye Wynn, who's a very similar player) or Brendan Nosovitch (because we ended up just fine at quarterback) or Eddie Goldman, with whom our chances were always tenuous at their very best.  Guys like Staub or Cross would've filled a real role that's more or less missing in this class.  Same for Prosise or Carter, as talented safeties.

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You asked for it last year and I didn't have it, so here it is this year: the original recruiting board, from back when I first posted it.  As you'll notice, not a lot of overlap between this and the final result.  2012 was definitely the year of the surprise, with UVA getting a lot of commitments (Brim, Hall, Dockins, Brown, etc.) before anyone had even had a chance to hear of the name.

There you are.  The final, updated product is available at the link on the side, and if you're curious about the final straggler names on there, their fates are as follows:

- Imani Cross to Nebraska
- Korren Kirven to Alabama
- Stefon Diggs hasn't decided yet.
- Mike Tyson..... poor, idealistic (or lazy) Mike Tyson.  He had offers from PSU, UVA, and VT this summer, but either he didn't want to be bothered with the process at the time or just procrastinated, and all those doors closed.  Tyson missed the bus.  He talked, at the time, of wanting to focus on other things besides recruiting, not a totally unreasonable thing for a high school rising senior to say, but unfortunately not the way things work these days.  It'll be interesting to see what happens.

If you click over to the board, I'd like to finish this up by drawing your attention to one thing.  Something I've been noticing since around the beginning of the season in September, but that I didn't want to mention for fear of jinxing it.  Previous final editions of the recruiting board have had a maroon section at the bottom; this one is conspicuously missing it.  This is not as high-powered a class as 2011, and Tech can claim victory in this year's recruiting wars - in fact it took one of their best classes in quite a while to do it.  But London and Co. can claim a major victory in keeping that maroon section completely off this year's board.

Who gets slotted into the maroon?  Decommitments.